introduction
I was born on July 15, 1978 in Port Jefferson Station, New York. I’ve moved several times in my life, finally ending up where I reside now in midtown-east Manhattan. Playing music, badminton, watching movies and programming are some of my hobbies. Walking is another hobby of mine since I walk just about everywhere. It’s just as well since walking is healthy and the best form of exercise that I get, although I’ve vowed to play more badminton on the weekends with a friend of mine. Badminton is a good workout and it's fun. I hope that pans out.
when floppy discs were floppy
Sometime before the age of 8 I had written my first program. It was on the Commodore 64 and I wrote it on my home computer in an attempt to make my first video game. Well, video didn’t really enter into it. The program randomly selected numbers and printed them on the screen, one per line, as fast as the computer could produce them. “no-whammy, no-whammy, no-whammy, stop!” The random-number generation stopped along with the press of a key and the number at the bottom of the list was the number of points the player received. There was no end to the game or to the amount of fun you could have with it :p. My teacher was so impressed that I was able to get out of some lectures for two days so I could rewrite the program on the in-school computer (equipped with a tape drive :) for the students at recess.
Kickstart 1.0
From the '64' I went on to programming the Commodore Amiga with my Amiga Basic spiral-bound reference book in hand. Not only could I impress my friends with that now all-too-familiar robotic computer voice by programming a phonetic language, well before Nintendo could ‘talk’, but I also created text-adventures for fun with my cousin. CFO (Comic book File Organizer) was one of my first attempts to write a program with a GUI. Unfortunately, the first screen with some menu options was as far as I got. The graphic arts were also a hobby of mine. Armed with Aegis Animator, Digipaint and eventually dabbling with Deluxe Video I learned about computer graphics and general software use and design.
learn and earn
Since 2nd grade I’ve matured a lot with respect to my programming expertise, at least :). I've been a professional developer for over 10 years now with experience developing software on platforms ranging from advanced millwork machinery to Windows desktop applications, including intranet web portals and e-commerce websites. I’ve worked for several companies in Long Island and New York City using technologies such as Microsoft Visual Basic, Visual Interdev, COM, ASP, DHTML, XML, Direct Animation, JScript, VBScript, C#, Visual Basic.NET, ASP.NET, ADO.NET, Managed DirectX, Microsoft Office automation, Sql Server 2000, Sql Server 2005, Visual Studio.NET, Visual Studio 2005 and a bit of Team Foundation Server. Currently, C# and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 is where I focus most of my time developing applications for my clients. Relational database design and implementation is also a big part of my daily activities, specifically with Microsoft Sql Server 2000 and 2005. My competencies in C# were acquired through experimentation, practice, community forums, public news groups, web sites such as MSDN and some books, all starting with the original .NET Framework 1.0 beta cd and notepad. The entire surface area of my computing knowledge from the Commodore 64 to the Microsoft .NET Framework, I'm proud to say, was acquired without the need for any formal education.
certifications
I'm an MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer) in .NET. I’m planning on taking the 2-part MCPD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer) Enterprise Application Developer upgrade exams in the future since I work exclusively with the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework and C# when developing solutions for my clients.
community
Open source projects are a hobby of mine. Look for projects that I've started or in which I participate under my alias, davedev, on Microsoft's CodePlex website.
For a while I had become a more active contributer to the Microsoft .NET public newsgroups in an attempt to give back to the community from which I've learned so much. But with my new open source projects it's been too difficult, admitedly, to do both. I prefer the open source projects since it's more fullfilling for me to produce free code then it is to produce free answers :) Though you still might find me learning to improve my skills as a software developer and architect, and helping others to do the same, in the following groups: