I am pragmatic and believe in getting things done efficiently and effectively, while knowing that there can be multiple perspectives and approaches to solving problems.
I love coding, and I love well-written code - there is a certain beauty and elegance to it that is deeply satisfying. Much code may not be considered to be well-written, and over the years I have learned to be slow to criticise the work of fellow developers’, as a great many are better developers than I am. It is often the case that the full context in which it was written - such as compromises required to be made, or pressures worked under - are unknown. That’s something that I try to pass on to others involved in software development.
The origins of my love of coding started while programming decades ago on the TRS-80 Model III and the VIC-20 (with a lot of help from Byte magazine). Eventually, I wrote a clunky word processor for the Commodore 64 using a display model in a computer store, whose manager had taken pity and had allowed me use of it after finishing the school day. Back then, I was a pretty average maths student - I might have been better at it if I hadn’t spent a year’s-worth of maths classes surreptitiously programming a Radio Shack PC-2 pocket computer (with a not-so-impressive 2,640 characters of memory) at every opportunity.
Even in jobs that wouldn’t look like they should involve coding, I found ways to make coding a part of them - from serving in the navy, through to government and in private industry roles. Solving problems through code is what I do.
Member of the IEEE/IEEE Computer Society since 2008.