Let the blogging commence

CodeCurve — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:33:43 GMT

What this new blog is about

Tech - I'm going to blog about technical stuff that interests / excites / confuses / frustrates me.

Meta-tech - I'm going to blog about over-arching concepts and issues related to software development. Philosophical, architectural, social...

I hope this blog will have an interesting slant because I started a new career as a software developer at the age of 33. It’s been a roller coaster ride over the last 2 years (so now you know my age) and I’ve had a chance to reflect on my experiences and want to get it out there on the internet.

Who I am

I'm currently specialising in C# and WPF. I've only been a developer for 2 years now, and have only been writing C# for 8 months. Before the C# I wrote Perl, and before that I was an actuary.

I chose this new career because I love developing software. I have a degree in maths and therefore an instinct for elegant solutions to technical problems and I enjoy building something that feels right and works well.

Getting into this industry without a Computer Science degree at the age of 33 wasn't easy and I'll definitely have more to say on that subject in future posts. I took the Perl job because I was interested in the language, liked the people who interviewed me, found the company interesting (it provides financial services) and, dare I say, because there weren't many companies out there willing to offer me a job. I really wanted to get into more mainstream, compiled languages such as Java or C#, but that simply wasn't a possibility 2 years ago. I was caught in the "no job without experience and no experience without a job" trap.

At the start of this year an opportunity came up to work for an agile shop and I jumped in. I wanted to work with C# and the .NET framework and I wanted to see a published product through from inception to delivery. I also wanted to learn about Test Driven Development and all that that implies.

It’s been a case of “be careful what you wish for”. I have had to get up to speed on a slew of new technologies (C# 3.0, WPF, WCF, threading, Linq, MbUnit, JavaScript, NHibernate) and also grapple with good practices such as low coupling, DRY, programming to interfaces, etc. and at times I’ve felt overwhelmed.

But I’m glad I took the plunge and I’m looking forward to learning more about the wonderful world of computers and software development. That seems enough for a first post. Time to think about what to blog about first!

About me

Let the blogging commence

What this new blog is about

Who I am