Breaking computers, fixing computers and learning from my mistakes since 12 years of age.

Roughly {CURRENT_YEAR-1992} years of computer 'experience' and, most relevant, {CURRENT_YEAR-1999} years professional experience as a paid software developer and multiple-IT-name-tag-wearer at a custom software/hardware/business solutions consulting firm.

Started with IBM DOS 4.01, stopped at MS-DOS 6.x and added DESQview because multi-tasking's kinda nice if you need to let the modem answer the phone while playing around. Jumped to Windows 3.x & WfW, moved on to OS/2 because it was better, then back to Windows because it seemed that's all there was after 95 stabbed OS/2 in the desktop-OS-market-share's-back. Macs still seemed like toys and I hadn't dared attempt Linux yet. Eventually there was Novel Netware, OS/400 and various Linux distros (finally). And last but in no way least, my current preference until something better comes along, OSX and its particular flavor of *nix... with VMware for everything else.

Who knew starting out running BBSs on a 286 as a preteen could turn into a career? I didn't, but it's a sweet gig.

I'm well versed in gerenal OO concepts, Objective-C, Java, C#, PHP, JavaScript as well as HTML, CSS and SQL. I've got production apps using Cocoa, Cocoa-Touch, Struts, JSF, WinForms.Net, ASP.Net, Kohana, jQuery and worked with a barrage of DB platforms including DB2 UDB, DB2/400, SQL Server, MySQL, SQLite, et al. And apparently being more than proficient at graphic design and 'obsessive' about UI design is unusual as a preferred coder. Popular podcasts say so, who am I to argue.. just another name tag. Next Ruby, then Rails to compliment it. There's always something else out there to twist your understanding enough to retrain your thought process.

Physics to software... there's a lot to learn if you're willing to put in the time. I find it, and a lot of seemingly disparate topics fascinating because, come to find out they're not so disparate after all. No real former CompSci education. All self taught, now with Google, Stack Exchange sites and peers on my side.

I've followed Stack Overflow (and brethren sites) since conception via the Stack Overflow podcast, which I miss, if only for the nerd flavored comedy. I'm just a long time drive-by stackoverflow.com googler and finally feel like I have enough time to contribute if I can. Been feeling guilty for not stopping to answer anything for a long long time.

I have no interest in badges or reputation points. I'm only interested in the exchange of nerd knowledge for which Jeff, Joel and gang did a fantastic job. For competition, I play Texas Hold'em, billiards and soon some form of micro-controlled battle bot.

Learn the fundamentals of language. From spoken to written to computationally understood, there are corollaries that make learning yet another programming much less painful... IMHO, YMMV. Also, learn the hotkeys.