I’m a very down to earth, 30-ish, Cape Town born, South African developer, I have never been big on technical jargon, fancy acronyms or saying things that make no sense to people who don’t do the job I do for a living.
Although I am laid-back about development, it is still a big part of my life. I mean, I do it for 70% of my week, every week, and I do enjoy it most of the time.
I started getting into development mostly out of sheer curiosity, but things got very interesting very fast and so my life quickly turned into one of late nights, writing code in my room, listening to classic rock and annoying the neighbours. These days I am working as a contract developer, building systems & websites, trying to find new coding challenges along the way. All the time trying to enjoy my other hobbies, which include playing guitar, drums, making ‘things’ with my hands, cooking, trying interesting new food and generally enjoying life.
I love the analyzing, trouble solving and logic. The feeling you get when starting a new project, seeing that first empty file open in your text editor, feeling like you can create the world with an ‘and’, ‘if’, ‘else’ and some other code in between, trying to determine the most effective way to create every little thing, from simple database structures to complex frameworks & systems. Researching new API’s, new programming methodologies, the latest languages or some new interesting way of using the old ones. And then finally seeing everything falling into place and growing into a product that you are proud to be a part of and feel responsible for.
I have been developing since 2002, although I dabbled in coding before then and have been trying to grow my repertoire from photoshop, typography & styling, to python, C++, C#, Java and game/mobile/database/app development.
For me development more a passion than a job, and although it may cause issues when I get a project that I simply cannot be passionate about, I still try to enjoy the hell out of it.