I was 14 when I wrote my first piece of code. It was the early '80s. Times were different back then. It was just a couple of lines of BASIC. Just a little a few lines of code never hurt anyone, right?
Then it was a few more lines. Then a program or two. Soon BASIC wasn't enough. I needed more. I moved onto harder, more addictive languages: Pascal, Forth, Lisp, even some Assembler. I got really messed up back in those days.
I line-of-code together put could not . (because (were (mixed languages up)))
Postfix, prefix, infix... I needed a fix. I couldn't stop. I needed more. I couldn't just be a user. I had to be programmer!
I've tried to stop. I even got my degree in Electrical Engineering and declared "I will never write code for a living." But it didn't last.
Soon I was back into it again, but this time I was getting into the real hard core stuff: C, C++, meta-Assembler, Flex, Bison. I even started creating my own languages.
For years I have fought it, but I keep coming back to it. I've tried being just a software architect. I've tried being just a Integration Lead, but in the end, I come back to it. Writing code.
A friend of mine once summed it up well: "John, your a tool-smith. You write tools. It's who you are."
He's right. I am a Tool-smith. Over the years I have found, written, experimented with, researched and used many different tools in software engineering. In this blog, I hope to share some of what I have found.
(update, 2019)
That lasted for a while, and it still correct, but that's not the whole story.
I'm also an author and a teacher. In 2018 I was approached to write my first teaching book, Hands-On Embedded Programming with Qt," (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1789952069). It was a long project (8 months), but I found it was something I had to do. Qt is a tool, and teaching how to use it excited me.
So I now says and am a "Tool-smith, author, and teacher." (... who uses the Oxford Comma.)
(update, 2019)
That lasted for a while, and it still correct, but that's not the whole story.
I'm also an author and a teacher. In 2018 I was approached to write my first teaching book, Hands-On Embedded Programming with Qt," (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1789952069). It was a long project (8 months), but I found it was something I had to do. Qt is a tool, and teaching how to use it excited me.
So I now says and am a "Tool-smith, author, and teacher." (... who uses the Oxford Comma.)
