Biography

I was lucky to be born in 1998 in Toruń.

If it had happened 20 years earlier, as a child I wouldn’t have had the tools to learn programming on my own – the most basic one is a computer. In 1990, when I would have been 12, the price of a computer was 18.31 of the average monthly salary. In 2010, when I was actually 12, that price had dropped to only 0.75 of the average monthly salary. I don’t want to write off my hypothetical career too early, so let’s say that little Bartek would have been a natural entrepreneur. He would have earned the money for his first computer by cutting the grass since he was able to reach the handle of a lawnmower.

Even then, a computer wouldn’t be useful to me if I had nothing to run on it. My favorite childhood game – Rayman 2 – which made me interested in game development and later in programming, was released in 1999. Baltie educational programs that I used to create the second series of my games (about the first one in a moment), arrived in Poland in 2001. I don’t rule out that their older, less friendly counterparts could also inspire me to become a programmer. They had to inspire someone – otherwise Rayman 2 and Baltie would never have been made. However, even in 2010, I had to be determined to turn the enthusiasm of the novice into the skills of an expert. I don’t think I would have been determined enough to overcome the barriers I would have faced 20 years earlier. I would have chosen a different, more approachable profession. I always thought I would have become a doctor. Or a carpenter.

Perhaps I would become interested in computers again in adulthood, but I wouldn’t change my studies or career for a field I know nothing about. At best, it could be my hobby that I would spend a couple of hours a week on between work and children. But that’s a minor inconvenience, considering that 40 years earlier I might not have been born at all.

The arrangement of blood types in my family put me at risk of developing hemolytic disease of the newborn, in which the mother’s immune system attacks the baby’s blood. Mothers have no influence over this – blood types are a lottery and a ticket that the child draws is at times unfortunate. Fortunately, this disease is practically eradicated in developed countries. The drug that prevents it successfully passed clinical trials and was approved in the 1960s – a decade after my hypothetical birth. This reminds me that my way of life and security that comes with it have existed only recently. And unfortunately, not everywhere.

As I mentioned, I was born in Toruń – a medium-sized city in central Poland. In a country that has its problems, but is a good place to live. One in two mothers in the world is not so lucky. She lives in a region where she and her children don’t receive as good health care as I do. Every year, more than 100 thousand newborns die because we can’t provide them with a medicine invented more than a half century ago. I was lucky. Which terrifies me even more that the lives of so many newborns remain a matter of luck, even if they do not have to.

That said, I’m not a volunteer in Africa or Asia. Instead, I am writing my biography in a comfortable apartment in Warsaw. Primarily because I am not a good enough person – I can’t sacrifice everything for strangers. And because I would be a terrible volunteer – I wash my hands over a dozen times a day, even when I don’t leave my apartment. But also because I can help in other ways.

Due to constant access to information, we have a feeling that each day brings a new crisis. Focusing on all of them is a simple path to apathy and cynicism. Instead, I try to dedicate my energy to only a few problems that I can impact in a measurable way. This limits me to solving only those related to my surroundings, those that benefit from who I am and those that I am willing to spend a lot of time on. I probably won’t change the world this way. Although, if James Harrison did, maybe I have a chance too.

James is an Australian with unusual blood. As I mentioned, blood is a lottery – a lottery, at which James won the grand prize. When he was a young adult, he learned that his blood produces antibodies that prevent hemolytic disease of the newborn. From then until he was 81, he donated plasma every week, saving the lives of 2.4 million newborns, including his own grandson.

Not everyone has such a unique talent like James, but everyone can help in their own unique way. That’s what I want to do in my life. That’s how I want to use my luck.

To be continued.