Online Programming Thoughts

Qualifications

I decided to start a new Blog on programming in general. I intend to put code snippits, articles about the industry, and other useful tidbits in here. Also if anyone should need any contract work done I would be more than happy to assist. I do not claim to be the best programmer in the world but I do alright and should be able to explain things to you.

I started out programming as a wee lad. I was 14 years old and had a TI-994A with a basic cartridge. Eventually I would graduate to a C-64 and write my first game called Farmer's Daughter. It used sprite manipulation and was really cool for a young kid. I kept playing with computers all of my teen years. I mostly liked the games, and in those days if you wanted a game to work you needed to understand the machines inside and out. I graduated to an Atari 130XE. It took alot of K-Mart money for that puppy. I did alot of chatting online and even ran my own BBS. I wrote a few modules for it too. I beleive it was programmed in some Basic derivitive. I stayed with Atari until they died out, having a 1040-ST at one point in time.

After High School I decided that I needed to get a job that was a little better than McDonalds or Caldors. So I went to a Tech School for 9-months and have never looked back. I had a great time at school. Rewriting the DEC-VAX OS for the fun of it. Getting straight A's. Correcting the teachers mistakes. Really good stuff. Once I graduated I got hired as a consultant for a EIS/DSS system. It was a 4-GL language something like basic and was great. I was making the HUGE sum of 24K a year! WOW! It was amazing. I got to travel around the country working at places like IBM, Ocean Spray, and National Sea Food. I got a nice red Mustang (never again) and life was good.

Over the years since then I have gotten into jobs leveraging skills from my past Jobs. I taught myself RPG on an AS/400 and Visual Basic to get a job at a Hospital. I leveraged my Visual Basic and SQL Server/Oracle skills to get a job consulting. I saw the folly of becoming too specialized if the market slowed so jumped into Web Development, Handheld, and Java technologies. I basically enjoyed learning and growing and discovering new commands and powers. It really is alot like being a magician.

The recent developments in my career have dampened my enthusiasm for programming a little. The downturn of the 90's was hard. I never was un-employed as so many others have been but I have had to take a little pay cut. I traded in the Mustang for the mini-van and mortgage and the exciting startup type jobs for more stable work. I am still contracting and enjoying it. Just not as much. The threat of offshore development is also looming. Someday I might have to retool and become something else. Possibly a professional poker player? Go see my other Blog Online Poker Thoughts for the state of that.

I get most of my enjoyment in programming these days either doing projects for myself or freelance stuff on Elance. I do alot of C# and .NET work these days and really like the language. I hope to share some fun projects with people, get feedback, exchange idea's, and basically just enjoy. If you have any suggestions for posts let me know. I will be doing a mix of linking to other sites and putting my own content up.

posted by SirFWALGMan @ 11:50 AM