How I got here, the full story

After several weeks of writing, the long and increasingly harrowing story of my journey through programming from interested amateur to burnt-out professional, has been brought fully up-to-date.

Links to each part, in order:

1. The early years - Classic 1980's 8-bit computers.
2. The Amiga years - Well ahead of it's time.
3. The Turbo Pascal years - Still one of the best IDE's ever made.
4. University year one - C++.
5. University year two - C++ and Standard ML.
6. University year three - Java.
7. Job No. 1 - Nine till five. There's a nine in the morning now?
8. Job No.s 2 & 3 - Small companies are basket cases.
9. Job No. 4 - Wastefulness on a very large scale.
10. Worst Leader Ever - Aggression in high-healed boots.
11. Triumph - Salvaging Job No. 5 from almost certain failure.
12. Job No. 6 - What the hell am I doing here?
    
13. Job No. 7 - The strange case of Job No. 7 and top-secret projects.
14. The Continuing Adventures of Paranoid Andy - Targets are not estimates, and vice-versa.
15. The Puppet - Self-defeating behaviour, a masterclass.
16. Job No. 8 - The tyranny of testing.

A good place to start at the non-bitter end of the spectrum is The Amiga Years. If you want to start at the other end, detailing the unique horror of "professional" software development, try The Continuing Adventures of Paranoid Andy.