I can relate much to the author's experience. I am also a Korean immigrant, with parents who owned a retail business, who grew up in the NYC area with a Commodore 64. I also majored in the liberal arts at an Ivy League school.

I have never been paid to write code, and my formal CS education is limited to AP Computer Science, and a one-credit Java class in college. But my computer background got me hired into tech investment banking out of college, and has shaped every aspect of my life and career. just today I debugged a bash script that is part of the workflow for my one-person business.

Thank you, Commodore.

Hello my Korean brother! Thanks so much for sharing your story, too. I started out as an engineer (materials science) then switched to English my sophomore year after realizing I couldn't imagine doing that for another three years.

But now look at us, we're like safecrackers in movies who try to go straight but end up in front of the vault again. :)