about me

I came to software development from another discipline. I had done a whole lot of programming in my previous field, but it was a means to an end. When I decided it was time to do something else, I looked at my skill set, and decided programming was my best bet. It was reasonably lucrative, and I wouldn't need to go back to school. All I needed to do was find a job.

I had never done object-oriented programming professionally; all of my previous work had been done in a couple of procedural languages. I had read that OOP was how all modern development was done, so I set myself to learning Java.

It took a while, but eventually I found a job as a Java developer, at the tail end of the dot-com boom. During my first year at that job, I spent a lot of my spare time studying the craft of programming in this new language. I was pretty motivated. Even though I wasn't exactly passionate about Java development, I enjoyed it and I wanted to get good at it. I was looking to become highly skilled in my field. I was surrounded by people who didn't seem to care one way or the other about professionalism. That attitude kind of surprised me.

Then the economy went south, and I became another unemployment statistic. I took the first job I could find at a shop that didn't have much truck with modern software development. My Java skills went rusty, and I became depressed and cynical about my "career" as a developer. I stopped studying or doing anything outside of work to improve my skills - what did it matter? I was not encouraged to do so, and any financial reward coming from such practice was a vague hope at best. I had become one of those employees who don't really care about professionalism.

A couple of job hops later, I've begun to feel a little more interested in my career. I'm doing Java development, once again, and it's a lot more fun than using mumbledy-mumble which I worked with in my last job. I've begun reading some technical books when I'm at home. I'm hoping to take a step up with my next job. I can see that probably won't happen unless I can blend in a little more with the people holding CS degrees.

I'm not sure exactly what I want. My motivation to improve started out, mainly, with a desire to earn a better salary. I'm guessing that there are some holes in my knowledge that need to be filled before that will happen. But I also want to do more challenging work. I think I'm a pretty solid developer, but I'm getting tired of doing the same old stuff over and over again. That may mean I'll have to leave this field behind. But maybe I can breathe some new life into my career; it's worth a try, anyway.