Monday, December 14, 2009

Let Me Introduce Myself

I’ve been considering starting a technical blog for some time—the technical posts on my personal blog just felt out of place.

And so “SwearPoint” was formed.

My plan for this blog is to share some knowledge I’ve gained about developing software professionally for over 20 years.  I am a web developer who got his start way back in the ‘80s on my Commodore 64.  I actually still have that computer down in the basement.  Haven’t turned it on it several years.  Perhaps a decade or more!  Not sure if it still works, even…

I would spend hours typing in BASIC programs in the back of magazines such as Home Computing (at least I think that’s the name…it’s been quite a while!), only to find that they didn’t work.  Then the next month they would publish the corrections to the code. Anyone else remember doing that?

I didn’t necessarily learn “good programming skills”, but I at least fostered my love for programming.

After graduating from high school, I attended the Georgia Institute of Technology, lovingly referred to as Georgia Tech.  I pursued a bachelor’s degree in Information and Computer Science, which I obtained in 1992.  During that time, I was involved with the cooperative education plan, in which I would attend classes for a  quarter and then go to work at a company for a quarter.  In hind sight, this was a very smart thing to do.  Not only did it introduce me to what working at a company is like, but I met many people who had a profound influence on my professional life.

Plus, that was the only job offer I received when graduating from college.  If you’ll recall, that was right before the .com boom, and programming jobs weren’t quite as easy to come by, so I felt blessed to have landed a job at that time.

Fast forward a few years.  One of the managers at that company contacted me a couple years after I left. He told me that he was starting a company and asked if I would be interested in working for him again.  I said, “Yes”, and thus started my 5 years at an upstart company (or “start-up”, if you prefer).  We weren’t exactly doing “web stuff”, which was the big focus at the time (1995), but we had good funding, and I had the chance to work with some very smart people again (most of the staff came from my first job).

Since then, I have mainly been a consultant working with Microsoft technologies such as (you guessed it) SharePoint.  I’ve also worked with BizTalk Server, Content Management Server (anyone remember that one?), and SQL Server.  I am quite proficient with .NET and the C# language (and to a lesser degree VB.NET).  My current passion is Silverlight 3.  I attended a “Firestarter Event” back in August for Silverlight 3, and there was definitely a fire started.

I’m only working on Silverlight in my spare time, thus the lack of blog posts about it so far.  Most of my time these days are spent dealing with SharePoint.

I foresee this blog being a reflection of my current experiences mostly, with occasional forays into software development practices in general, consulting tips, and possibly some plain ol’ nostalgia (especially after I get that Commodore 64 hooked up again—I’ll be interested to see if any of the 5 1/4” floppies are still readable).

So there we are—that’s my introduction.  If you happen across this post, please let me a comment.  Please click the advertising links!  :-)  After all, I have 4 kids to feed (and to put through college some day!).

Thank you for reading.

2 comments:

  1. My suggestion is to build your self brand, don't obfuscate who you are. And setup a website with your name on it so you can build that brand.

    I've seen so many people make the same mistake you are by starting something with some weird name that isn't assocated with you.

    Just be yourself and you'll get more value out of it.

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