My first adventure in computer programming was with basic.  Remember? Something like this was fun to write:

10 PRINT "I am so cool...!"
20 GO TO 10

And at that time I was lucky enough to be able to get one of the first home computers, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A. It was a great machine.  Just plug it to the TV and code or play games.

I started coding a bit more seriously when I was in high school, at that time the line of PS/2 from IBM (based on Intel 286) was coming to market and my school was getting one of the first computer labs in the country (Italy).  I got to stay after school to unpack all those boxes, set up monitors and desktops and my first app was a DOS .bat file that was running at power on.  It was just a simple welcome screen for the users to know they were in the I.T.I.S. Omar Novara computer lab….but the coolest thing was that it was signed with…..”by ERP”, my initials.  Soooo silly but so cool at the same time.  By then I was hooked.

Later on, my passion for storing and organizing data became obvious with dBase III.  After a storm, while serving in the Italian military, our employees record system blew out.  So I was “commanded” to restore the database and create a brand new system to collect in-and-out times from the punching machine and generate reports for payroll.

They already had in place dBase III which allowed me to easily create a UI with a report area.

These were really my first exposure to software development.  After that and the arrival of internet I was ever more fascinated with web development for business application and the idea to emulate desktop apps speed on the web.

Coming from an early DOS experience I soon embrace the Microsoft world and still today I usually develop in .Net with a great love for front-end frameworks like AngularJS.