Bio

Passion for learning

Early

Since childhood, I have been fascinated by technology and science. I will never thank my mother enough for having provided me with a house full of books, magazines, comics, and toys which challenged my curiosity.

At school, I started eager for learning, but soon lost that drive. Too many repetitions of the same themes were too boring. One of the results of this teaching method was driving me away from Math. Some few years lost.

During the 6th grade, I got caught by an arid theme in Math: Polynomials. Yes, a dry subject. But somehow my interest in Math was reborn, and I discovered I did not need a teacher to learn, everything was in the textbooks! I started learning Math by myself. In the beginning, only with the textbooks, later I started using another source: a High School TV course (I was still in school) named "Telecurso 2º Grau" (something like High School Telecourseware). By 8th grade, I already knew all the Mathematics, Physics, and History (another passion) of High School curricula. During the 1st year of High School, thanks to a mysterious book I found in a bookstore, I learned the basics of Calculus. By this time, I could prove theorems and had an intuitive logic process (just in 2000 I learned some formal Symbolic Logic!) — The point is: I had then a solid foundation in Mathematics, the main tool for a programmer intending to create deep solutions.

Electronics, then Computers

While I studied Math, I also started seeking knowledge about Electronics. The intricacies and precision of circuit diagrams seemed fascinating, and I started fetching magazines about the subject. I even tried to build a couple of projects, but with no success: none worked! Although still fascinated, I was beginning to get frustrated with my failures when a new topic started appearing in the electronic magazines: microcomputers. The world lost a lousy electronic technician and gained a passable computer programmer.