Alright, you guys got a headstart on me with the comments tonight, but I'll jump in. At severe risk of getting flamed, here's the highlights:
1970 - FORTRAN engineering sims and P-CAP on a B5500 (keypunch)
1973 - PDP-8 assembler, paper tape, TECO
1974 - First pro job, research electronics designer.
1975 - Heard about the Altair 8080, scrapped own 8-bit 7400-TTL computer design.
1976 - Bought KIM-1, Tek 4010-1 graphics CRT, TinyBasic in ROM. 6502 assembler.
1977 - Wrote much graphics and utility software for 6502. First national code publication. First use of Apple-][.
1978 - First self-designed/built home computer. 1979 - Real-time industrial controllers, 6800 assembler.
1980 - Added core planes (64KB) to home computer.
1981 - Joined aerospace firm as engineer, became defacto sysadmin (a pattern to be repeated for the next 25 years).
1982 - First IBM-PC, 8086 assembler.
1983 - DSP-based geosynchronous spacecraft attitude control sensor for Intelsat.
1984 - First use of VAX/11-780, VMS, email. First of many Macintoshes.
1985 - 80168-based industrial process controller. Got first UNIX minicomputer, learned UNIX.
1986 - Wrote first complete interactive shell and utility suite. Programming in C.
1988 - Independent consultant, various projects.
1991 - First use of Windows.
1992 - Designing early PCMCIA hardware, software.
1994 - First use of NetBSD UNIX.
1996 - Engineering LAN of NetBSD and Win95. Wrote first website (handcoded HTML of course).
1998 - First of many iMacs.
2000 - First of many Linux boxes.
2001 - H/W+S/W for FireWire ext. hard drives.
2002 - First OS-X usage.
2003 - First use of Exchange. Wrote and deployed first corporate website.
2004 - Start lurking on FreeRepublic.
2005 - Sysadmin for hybrid network of BSD, Solaris, Windows, OS-X machines. First MacMini. Joined FR and started posting.
2006 - Running small (<1000 users) international corporate network for cutting-edge system software company.
So guys, even though I don't have an MSCE (never needed one), can I play, too? ;-)
I've gone to the Dark Side -- large scale business applications.
But I did lots of COBOL (of course), BAL, Z80 (when I had a business and wrote all our applications for our CP/M S-100 system), every POSSIBLE variante of BASIC, Fortran IV, WatFive, PL/1, APL (I can create a whole program in one line!), LISP, etc.
I still keep a hand in with ksh and DOS scripts and the like, but nowadays I head up implementation projects.
This is great, a whole mess of gurus on freerepublic. I am canceling my experts-exchange.com account =)
dayglored, That's a good list but how much of it is now relevant?? dubie to be successful you have the right attitude and don't let some know it all techie put you down. Is there wisdom from the older generation yes, as long as it is not condescending and supportive of your success and researched opinion!
So it took you until '05 to become productive :-)