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DNFTT! 
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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I would be a... lumberjack!
Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia!
The giant redwood, the larch, the fir, the mighty scots pine!
The smell of fresh-cut timber! The crash of mighty trees!
With my best girlie by my side...
(I would probably have gone into electrical engineering)
EDIT: quote from Monty Python's Flying Circus: Just the Words - Episode 9[^]
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Cabinet maker, I love working with wood. In my younger more foolish days I was a house painter and also made lots of furniture before I discovered computers.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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Since I started working before computers were personal. I would be in engineering. Yes, you can do engineering without computers, it just takes longer.
Mongo: Mongo only pawn... in game of life.
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I've often wondered that. The list I came up with is psychologist, philosopher, theologian, or monk, depending on how far back in time you want to go. Possibly architect.
Then again, I'd probably be dead, having either died pathetically as a conscripted foot soldier in a war or from disease, or at best been a farmer. I seriously doubt I would have risen through any military ranks, but politician might have been possible, though in that case I would have lost my marbles drinking from lead-laced aqueducts if in Rome.
Marc
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I'd be the inventor of the first computer. 
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I would still be a chemist. It was a lot of fun, but I don't miss it.
modified 19-Nov-21 21:01pm.
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A fishing guide, specializing in Musky[^],  oh dare to dream.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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I would be totally lost. It's the only thing I know how to do. I hate all physical work (well... almost all  ) and I have two left hands. Perhaps I'd be an artist or a writer, I've done both in the past, but in that case I'd be starving too 
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If computers weren't in existence I think I'd just drive a truck.
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(male) escort first, with some sex work to bump up the income. trouble of starting new again is it takes a while before you can be a bit more choosy. Might also need to shift location unless supplemented with part time construction work.
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Most likely, I would still be in the restaurant business. I worked over 6 years in one before the Marine Corps taught me how to program correctly. It's possible that I would be retired now, having sold the restaurant that I bought when I was 30.
Currently reading: "The Prince", by Nicolo Machiavelli
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A Forest Ranger. It's the only career I ever went out of my way to research in the high school Guidance Office.
It's my "road not taken."
Cheers,
Mike Fidler
"I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright
"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright
"I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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Since my father and brother were auto mechanic's I would probably follow in that. I still do alot of my own car repairs and most of the body work. So it is something I could do. Either that or carpentry. It does seem to me that alot of the skills you use in troubleshooting and building stuff in computers is directly the same when I am building a bookshelf or repairing a car. So that I feel is where I would be.
Either that or traveling in Columbia trying to not get killed. But who knows.
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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Interesting Question.
Without computers, the whole world would look differently.
Assuming we had electricity, and automation was still required.
I would be doing "hard-wiring" of systems to create things.
My skills are simply in analysis and automation. Making peoples lives easier.
A Mechanical Loom. Studying self-playing pianos...
MAYBE an electrician like my father as a fall back.
Kirk Out!
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Before I was seduced by the dark side of programming, I was studying to be an architect.
At the end of high school (where we self taught ourselves how to program), I was looking at 4 years of college and 10 years of apprenticeship, or 6 years of college and 4 years of apprenticeship, or "I can program now."
I was one that found programming incredibly easy, compared to others around me.
For that, I credit my parents giving me plastic model cars, rockets, and planes to assemble to keep me entertained as an only child living on a farm. I learned the importance of following directions. Programming was reversing that, creating directions, instead of following them.
Architecture taught me the importance of planning and design.
Both careers start with a blank sheet of paper and then creating something tangible.
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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Happier? Less stressed?
Probably not either; I'd just find new things to stress over.
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I love this thread! Thanks Vincent!
I had a drafting teacher who wanted to apprentice me to an Architecture firm. But my first love before computing was everything else electronic, so possibly an Electronics Engineer. Also was career military, so I'd probably have stayed. My career field there was based around seismology (it was classified as an Electronics career), so I could still be looking at wiggly lines.
Maybe could be building things, writing, playing music (musicing?) or teaching. Of course there's always the possibility I'd be homeless on the street somewhere!  
That's probably why I like development so much: Every job and every day is different! Always learning, always creating, always experimenting.
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I did enjoy drafting in school (pre-CAD). But I fell into computers in the late '70s and started programming shortly thereafter. I shudder to think what else I would have done. Being paid to write programs for me is like being a kid and playing with 'tinker toys' or an 'erector set', except I am building logic structures in my mind and implementing them. And as a previous post said, I would have likely been a different person.
All my friends have to work all week doing jobs they basically hate. I know I am absolutely spoiled rotten.
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ajhampson wrote: who wanted to apprentice me to an Architecture firm.
I've always wanted to be an architect or atlas an artist, but I landed in computer world because I didn't have a choice that time. Tale Of A Professional Developer - Untold[^]
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If computers hadn't been around when I was in high-school, I'd have likely ended up a woodworker, making tables, chairs, and the like. I did four years of 'shop' in high-school, and loved it immensely (lathe-work especially!) Sadly, I found computers much more interesting (and distracting!) so that's where I landed.
Who knows, maybe once I retire in a few decades I'll get back to it... Assuming this Earth still has wood in 30-odd years!
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I'm also a qualified electrician.
...so I'd probably be dead because I'm too lazy to _always_ check whether a wire is live or not before touching it.
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I'd be a sliderule jockey for an engineering firm. That's almost what I ended up doing, anyway, only computer programming was hella more fun.
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I have heard people say that only use partial classes when there is auto-generated code. I have found that I like to use them to separate different parts of the code that are pretty much independent, but not totally. It seems to make working on the code easier since functionality is separated by files, and this reduces the length of each file, which makes it easy to find what I am looking. If I created separate classes for the same thing, I would need to pass information to allow them to change access elements. I have also used, but did not implement, a case in an adapter where all the calls to get database data were through the same class, and each table had its own file which was a partial class. I thought this worked well, and kept code conflicts down. I just followed the pattern.
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