Design with Silverlight

OK, Dave's picking on me, so I'll bite. =)

How old were you when you first started programming?
I was 12 or 13. This was back in 1982 or 1983. My dad got an Apple ][+ that I started plugging away on, in GW-Basic, I believe. Once I got rolling, I started grabbing all the books and magazine subscriptions I could. Back then, a lot of program listings were provided in Assembly, so I would literally spend HOURS typing in lines of hex code to get programs out of the magazines to run.

How did you get started in programming?
I don't remember what actually got me into programming on our Apple. I do remember when I was very young, my father would bring me into work with him on the weekends sometimes - he worked at Tandem Computers, which was later acquired by Compaq. I would sit there at a terminal and play Eliza or one of the football games the programmers there had created. If I can point to anything that piqued my interest along the way, that would be it.

What was your first language?
GW-Basic.

What was the first real program you wrote?
When I was 13, I remember all I wanted to do was be a programmer. Somewhere along the way, I grew away from that desire and did other things for a while until getting into web development in my early 20s. So, "real" program, I don't know. I wrote a pretty kick-ass Star Trek program back in '83 or '84, using graphic sprites and audio through a Mockingboard on the Apple, which by then had been chipped to upgrade to an Apple //e.

What languages have you used since you started programming?
Once you get going, you just can't get enough. I've done Assembler, C, Cobol (bleh), Pascal, C++, Basic, Fortran, Java, C# and VB. At the time, C was my favorite - we'd write Assembler code inline for video card initialization. Boy have times changed! I like C# now. Go figure...

What was your first professional programming gig?
I worked for a bit doing Java for an online domain name acquisition company, but never got deeply into it. There's been bits and pieces through my web development here and there, but I suppose I consider my current job the "real deal", since it's almost purely coding most of the time.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?
Yes, and I'd have been rich from Yahoo stock, too! The only thing I would have changed was that I would not have let my desire to be a developer get away from me for so long, but hey, that's life.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Find a mentor. The amount of information can be overwhelming, and if you're lucky, you can find someone willing to help bring you along. You don't want someone to give you the answers, but it's great to have people to bounce ideas off of when you hit a spot where you could use some input.

What's the most fun you ever had programming?
What can I say? Silverlight. The variety of programs I get to produce in my current role keeps it interesting and fun. Anyone that is a challenge but gets done on time is the most fun. =)

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had … programming?
I'm sure there's a road trip or two that would rank highly as "most fun", but programming is fun - I can look forward to getting up and going to work each day to dig into whatever project we have on the board.

Who are you calling out?
Rob Houweling
Adam Kinney (how did he slip by this?)
Michael Washington (that's two, Michael!)

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 11:55 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.