Call me Tom. I graduated in 2002 from the University of Rochester with a degree in English and a focus on creative writing. I took a wide variety of courses covering Quantum Physics, Java, Chemistry, Psychology of Sexuality (a course that should be required), Tai-Chi, Swing Dance, Introduction to Violin/Cello/Bass, Multidimensional Calculus, Linear Algebra, and of course a smattering of english classes that ranged from old english (very old) to Shakespeare to Victorian to Modern and so on. I also was a writing tutor for two years and worked with dozens of students to improve their writing skills.

Which begs the question – why a degree in English? Well I have always loved to read. When I was in middle school I read close to a novel every other day. I was your classic bookworm. I read on the school bus, I read between classes, I read after school in the basement of the library and I stayed up into the wee hours of the night trying to prove my mom wrong about how reading in the dark wrecks your eyes. I did get glasses for the first time last year, but I swear it had nothing to do with those late night voyages through the pages of my latest book borrowed from my wonderful town library. In college though, my gravitation towards an english degree had less to do with my love of reading and more to do with my love of the classes. After sitting through lectures in Chemistry/Java/etc with two hundred plus students, half of whom were asleep or talking to one another, and realizing that I (okay my parents) were paying through the nose for me to learn everything through a book and not through an educator I gave up on all my technical classes. English classes are where it was at. The students were engaged, the professors were engaged, the coursework is fun and interesting and so that is the road I chose. As I reflect upon those times I am very happy with my decision still.

So why am I a programmer now? Because I have always loved computers and because I have an engineer’s mind. Engineers love to solve problems and computer programming is full of them. There is always more than one way to programmatically solve a problem. The computer provides me the flexibility to tackle thousands of different types of problems from the comfort of my office chair. I have spent a lot of my time teaching myself to program by lurking on forums, searching through google and hitting up my older brother, friends and coworkers to help guide me through the rigors of development. If there is one thing I have learned from programming in the real world, it is that ‘learn by doing’ is the best medicine for a software developer.

I hope to use this blog to give back to the general software development community. There are people who spend a lot of time contributing to a body of knowledge that helps countless others. For many years I have been the recipient of this help. Now that I have reached a point in my life where I am an experienced software developer, I wish to give back to the community and hopefully put all those years of literary education to good use.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 3:01 am and is filed under Editorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.