I started programming computers when I was 13? It was 6th grade, and the language was Logo. My dad had tried to teach me BASIC, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the “For… Next” loop. “Foreach” made perfect sense, but “For… Next” made my brain hit a wall. I had the same problem with Algebra. Does. Not. Compute.

I’ve never had a head for math, and the idea that an expression shouldn’t be ‘solved’, but rather used to describe a relationship didn’t click in my mind until many years later. Until that the idea that you could describe anything mathematically seemed like so much bunk. After all, a tree isn’t a number. How do you describe a tree with something like “X = 6”. The concept of ‘abstraction’ just didn’t fit into my literal mind.

It turned out that painfully pedantic and literal mind was actually really good when it came to talking to computers, who are even more literal and pedantic than I was. I just needed a concrete, real-world situation to get the ducks to fall into a line in my head. For me that situation was running a business.

I knew myself too well, and I knew there was no way I was going to do all the little fiddly, time and accuracy sensitive things that a business required. Hell, I was doing well if I could prevent myself from overdrafting the company checking account. At the same time, I was in business to do my thing - which happened to be teaching kick and punch - not for the joy of running a small business. The business side of things was always a burden. I just wanted to jump around in pajamas and hit people for money.

When you’re a small business owner, you have a lot of needs, and generally speaking, not a lot of money. There were some people I could ask for help - many of them my students, and ask them I did. In the end though, it was my problem, and I had to solve it. When the buck truly stops with you - because there isn’t anyone else, you discover wells of creativity and stubbornness within yourself.

Later, when I started working for large companies, I discovered that my experience of being ‘the only one’ gave me super powers none of my associates posessed. I not only understood how things worked, but also how the systems our stuff connected to worked. I could speak to the other departments, and help them help us.

Eventually this ‘Jack of All Trades’ background I’d developed acquired it own name - DevOps - and my career took off. In the DevOps world, the number one skill is ‘FITFO’. It’s the rarest skill in the world, and the only one worth having.

See, technology is always changing, adapting, reinventing itself- or pretending to. It doesn’t really matter what you know. Whatever it is, blink and it will change. What matters is how fast you can learn.

Learning - acquiring new knowledge - is the real name of the game. Acquiring and assimilating new knowledge is the first half of FITFO. In any situation worth your (hopefully enormous) salary, is your ability to FITFO.