Brainbench | Transcript ID 91390 | Visual Basic Programmer
I earned my Brainbench Certification as a Certified Visual Basic Programmer. It wasn’t a college degree, and it wasn’t pretending to be one — but for the era, it was meaningful. It validated skills I’d built through curiosity, persistence, and a whole lot of late-night experimenting during one of the most exciting times in personal computing.
My programming story started much earlier with BASIC on whatever machines I could get my hands on — an IBM PS/2, an Atari 400, an Apple II, and a rotating lineup of IBM-compatible systems. I grew through QBasic and QuickBasic and eventually discovered Visual Basic, which I first downloaded from a Pittsburgh BBS during the warez era. That community wasn’t just about software; it was about learning, tinkering, and pushing limits alongside others who were just as obsessed with making computers do things.
Once I had Visual Basic, I dove in. I built programs simply because I could — and because it was fun. One of my first creations was a signature generator for BBS and early Internet messaging. Back when people ended their posts with identity codes full of symbols and cryptic tags, I built a tool with dropdowns, radio buttons, and checkboxes so people could quickly generate their perfect digital “badge.”
I also created a Leet Speak converter that transformed normal text into L337 5P3AK, swapping letters for numbers and symbols because — at the time — it was both cool and hilariously unreadable.
And then there was Cool Color Maker — a Visual Basic tool I used to generate color-gradient text for my GeoCities page at 4507 Athens, Acropolis (Source Code). This was peak late-90s web culture: animated GIFs, page counters, MIDI music, and text that absolutely had to be colorful to be taken seriously. Cool Color Maker let me take plain text and transform it into multicolored, eye-catching headings because design tools didn’t exist for most of us yet — so we built our own.
By the late 1990s, I was working professionally in Visual Basic at GMSI and had about five years of real-world experience. What I didn’t have was a college degree yet. On paper, that could make it look like I was “just” a high school graduate — unless I could show something more.
That’s where Brainbench came in.
Their certification exams were online and free — revolutionary at a time when testing normally meant fees, travel, and time off work. This was before online college learning was common. Brainbench simply said: if you know it, prove it right here. And these weren’t simple quizzes. They were timed, scenario-based, and demanded real programming competence.
Passing didn’t feel symbolic. It felt earned.
The certification gave employers tangible proof of my expertise, and it recognized what years of hands-on programming — from hobby projects to professional work — had already built. More than that, it represents an early chapter in how online skill validation reshaped opportunities for self-taught developers like me.
It wasn’t a degree. But it was meaningful. It opened doors, validated experience, and marked a milestone in a journey fueled by curiosity, creativity, and determination.
And to this day, I’m still proud of it.
