I did not begin pursuing programming as a career until after high school. I began my education in networking, to which I had discovered that it was not the career path I desired. I developed an interest in programming when I downloaded and opened up the code of several GUI based compilers I taught myself how to use as a hobby. After beginning my programming courses, I realized that it was very similar to what I had been doing with those programs, and I had already taught myself most of the material through my years of casual personal program development. In my spare time, I am still attempting to build programs for my personal use.