Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday.

I was surprised when I brought up Google this morning and the "Google Doodle" showed a cupcake, a present, and ribbon. I thought, "What a coincidence. I wonder which famous person also has my birthday?" After all, Google is known for celebrating birthdays of celebrities.

When I hovered over the doodle, I was taken aback! It said, "Happy Birthday Steve!"

Google knew that it was my birthday and changed my Google homepage in celebration of me!

I have no clue what you other less-important people are seeing on your Google homepages, but for me, I'll take my cupcake and present! :-)

[By the way, if I click on the doodle I'm taken to my Google profile page.]

Slow Going

As you know, it's the end of the year.  Holidays are only days away.  So is vacation time.  I'm frantically finishing up 2009 work so that I can take some time off and return fresh in the new year.

So here's to a good start in 2009 on this blog.  I'm aiming to make 2010 even better.  Perhaps I'll even get a new URL to boot.

I have lots of things planned, just need to implement the plan now.  I'll be posting my learning experiences here.

As always, I look forward to your feedback.

Mentoring

I got my start in programming from typing lines of BASIC in the backs of magazines into my Commodore 64.  I didn’t really understand what each line did at first, but I dutifully typed in the lines, just to see the finished product in action.

I got my professional start in programming when I was a student at Georgia Tech.  When I enrolled at Tech, I indicated that I wanted to be part of the cooperative education plan, which meant that I would attend classes for one quarter, then work at a  company for one quarter, then repeat.  It took me a little over a year to find a company that would hire me as a “co-op student”, but once I did I stayed with that company until I graduated from college.  In fact, that company hired me when I graduated, and I went to work for them full-time.

But while I was still a co-op student, I often felt that I learned more while I was on the job rather than when I was in school.  I think the reason for this is that I was very fortunate to have found a job where there were many people eager to share their knowledge of programming with me.

In a nutshell, I was surrounded by mentors.

I have very fond memories of those days—people smarter than myself showing me how things got done in the “real world”.  As a result, I often take the time to teach others things that I have learned, now that I’ve been a professional developer for nearly 20 years.

I guess that’s where this blog is coming from.

In my current role as a consultant, my coworkers are all very knowledgeable about software development, so I don’t often get to mentor them.  But on the rare occasion that I get to explain something, or show something that I know, it really gives me a sense of satisfaction when I can see that I’ve made a difference—when the other person has that “a-ha” moment and has learned something.

I think we can all learn from each other, and I think that there is great value in continually learning new things.  My company doesn’t currently have a mentoring program, but I’m considering suggesting that they start one.

What about your company?  Do you have a mentoring program of sorts?  If so, what’s it like?  Can you quantify the value of it?  Is it company-supported?

I’d be willing to collaborate with you (Google Wave, anyone?) on a “Mentoring Charter” of sorts if you want to start a similar program at your company.

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.