The early years

I have been programming since fall 1998. I began programming in QBasic since I was introduce to it by a classmate. I self learned it for two years, downloading and reading the code of hundreds of programs. But AFAIK I never finished any project, and my best work has been lost, but I learned alot about programming in general.

Then I learnt Visual Basic (*shudder* horrible memories) and C/C++ in school courses, it was just basic courses and I studied much more than was required. Especially C/C++ which I'll come back to later. I also learned the basics of html but I wasn't very interested in making websites.

I also got a short look into asm, and had some royal fun with that too. I a class we were supposed to just make an external engine spin, most people just solved the basic task and went on. Me and one other guy was a little more interested though and I especially went to the extreme trying to spin that engine as fast as I could. The teacher even worried I'd break the equipment, I still have the code somewhere.

In 2001 I studied multimedia and learned lingo in director 8 where I made a few silly games. I also made my first group effort in programming, a fighting game that is incredibly ridiculous. That game featured animated photos of the group members. I was the senior programmer in the whole class so I also helped other groups with their programming.

The programming lifestyle

Now it's time to mention some more about C/C++. Ever since I first learned the language it was my primary language, except first the first few months when I still had more momentum in QBasic. So after 3 years of gymnasium and another 3 years taking extra gymnasium level classes I had 6 years of C/C++ experience. This period contained lots of growth and failure, but also a few successes.

Thanks to the low level game library Allegro, which is very easy to use, I managed to finish a few of my projects. I made a ray casting engine, a graphically mesmerizing toy (both 2D and 3D), a pretty special breakout game and a side scrolling space shooter. All on my own.

While I was using Allegro a lot. I not only asked for help in the Allegro community, I was a very active member in general. Both discussing worldly subjects and helping those who I could help. I felt very close to everyone because I was rapidly learning stuff all the time and it felt good to be helped as well as give help.

Through these years I lived for programming. I think I spent the majority of my time staring at code or browsing allegro.cc.

Studying serious programming

In 2004 I was accepted to study in a Computer game programming program at the university of Skövde. I entered a life where everyone around me loved games and game development. I was there to learn how to program the right way and how to work in projects among other things.

Even though this program was supposed to work for people who had never touched programming before. It was a rough start even for me, the first course was about programming correct object oriented code in C++. I learnt a lot and felt that if this keeps up I'll be learning more valuable skills than I had in my entire life. This was big stuff.

Well, I don't want to go into details about my education so I'll just refer you to my CV. It's unfortunately currently just available in Swedish though. But for now, lets just say I learnt a ton of good things during those three years. Some said I was a good programmer before Uni, but compared to what I am now that was nothing.