Your Basic Intro
Hi, I'm Deirdre Saoirse Moen, and I've been a developer for ages.
Recently there was a meme going around to show off the IDE we used when we first started programming. My response:
IDE? LOL. Build process? LOL.
Yep, learned back in the paper tape days, and I can still recall the smell of machine oil.
Build Processes of Yore
That said, old school source control did exist in various forms. We worked on microcomputer systems that were horrifically underpowered by today's standards. Our "source control" was printing out changed source files at day's end, stamping them with the date, then removing the old versions and putting it onto "the heap," adding a stamp for the date it became obsolete.
That and a really long drafting ruler to do side-by-side comparisons of current printout vs. last known working.
Oh, and some notebook paper in the front of the notebook to list the current status of all the files.
Learning Swift
Before Swift came out, I'd hit a wall: I'd written all the software, and worked all the jobs, that I was passionately interested in, and I just couldn't think of anything else I really wanted to do. With a few years of travel, and a family member's hospitalization, it was easy to avoid answering the question.
Then Swift Playgrounds came out, and it's…just adorable.