About

I've been programming since early high school, and dabbling in web design (html/css) even longer.  My interests tend to lie in personal and/or web software.  I love all aspects of the development cycle (except documentation- though incredibly necessary, it's no fun to write).

In my spare time I like to work on my own projects, but when I'm not doing that I explore abandoned buildings, take photos, draw, play soccer/frisbee, do stuff with friends, and bike a little.

I worked at GE MDS writing desktop software for industrial radios.  Since I was on a very small team (2-3 people), I was able to participate in the entire software process, from conception to maintenance, interacting with managers, customers, and sales people.  A few fun lessons I learned:

• Poor testing is far more painful than writing tests.  I'd been told this before, but it took a first-hand burn to really understand it.
• There's no such thing as being too prepared for requirements changes
• Being able to pick up new tools and technologies on the fly is a necessary part of life as a developer.
• The dreaded cubicle farms aren't that bad when you have fascinating work and fresh coffee.
  

Of course, I learned so much that I'm actually a little ashamed of some of the work I did there, having learned how to do it so much better by the end.

After that I co-oped at IBM, working with the Lotus Connections team.  This was my introduction to heavy front-end web development: I was writing js widgets in Dojo running in enterprise webapps (Mashups and Connections) running on Websphere.  A few lessons I learned:

• Usability is not a given, even at very large and successful companies.
• Performance can be a significant part of usability.
• No amount of intelligent coworkers and casual work environment can make up for uninteresting work.