I don't expect anyone will ever write my biography for me, which is probably as good an indication as any that nobody wants to read it, but here goes anyway...
Will The Geek
I first started programming around 20 years ago on an Amstrad CPC 464 which I bought out of the classified ads in the local newspaper with money that I'd saved in NatWest's Piggy Bank Scheme (yes I have all 5 of the pigs!). I was very young at the time and didn't really know to go about learning to program the thing, but there was a reference for the built-in BASIC interpreter in the Amstrad's manual, which proved sufficient to get me started. Soon afterwards, personal computing took a leap forward with the Atari ST series and it's rival, the Amiga 500. As soon as finances would permit, I upgraded my Amstrad to an Atari STFM (some time around 1990 I think) and that's when I really started to learn how everything worked beneath the surface, progressing from BASIC languages (STOS and HiSoft Basic were my favourites on the ST) to start writing Assembly Language programs.
During the years that followed, I learnt many more programming languages and styles. After upgrading once more to a PC platform, I never found the motivation to learn assembler for Intel processors, and have probably used progressively more high-level languages ever since, until settling on Visual Basic as my preferred development tool. Of course, VB has it's limitations, but for your average database application (i.e. 90% of business software), it doesn't matter one bit. I never really got along with C/++ and only used it where absolutely necessary. I was quite fond of Turbo Pascal for a time (and eventually Delphi), but ultimately I've always been most comfortable with a BASIC style syntax.
I never learnt a single thing about computers whilst attending Lode Heath School - in fact I could have taught the teachers a few things, so I didn't see much point in taking Computer Science as an A-Level for much the same reasons. Besides, I wanted to be a Cosmologist, not a programmer! After leaving school, I worked for a company called International Stock in Birmingham, which buys salvage stock from insurance companies, cleans it up, values it, then sells it on to both the public (from it's warehouse in Kings Heath) and to trade buyers. And this is perhaps where you would say my career as a professional programmer started, because when they discovered I could program, they paid me to write an application for recording all the stock as it was processed, maintaining price lists, inventory etc. for ISO standard compliance.
On leaving Solihull Sixth Form College (well being kicked out for non-attendance to be thruthful), I did the typical Silhillian stint at "The Gas" (by this point Transco, and now National Grid) where I ended up writing software as usual. After about 14 months, I finally bit the bullet and got an actual job as a programmer so that I would at least earn proper money for it. The company that took me on is Centralis, and though I can't regret leaving Centralis because of all the interesting stuff I've seen and done since, I have to admit I was the happiest there of all the places I've worked. Centralis is where I really cut my teeth as a professional programmer and it was an excellent environment for that where I got introduced to quite a broad range of technologies one way or another. To this day I still hear John Dickinson telling me "horses for courses" whenever I start to overcomplicate something.
At the turn of 2000/2001, I moved to London. Tracey had been living there some time already, in Paddington whilst training at St Mary's Hospital, but the hospital accommodation there was utterly disgraceful, so we rented a small flat in Wapping with our mutual friend Ruth who had also just moved down to London. I got a job at a company in St Albans, which it soon trasnspired was not the best idea - commuting from Zone 1 to outside of London entirely is completely the opposite of what any normal person would do. Anyway, the company was an internet start-up, which folded very suddenly about 3 months later. So I got a new job, and one that has had a big impact on my life, at Ulysses Systems. Ulysses is sort of the software arm of a Greek shipping company, building an interesting Knowledge Management platform and associated plugin applications for the Maritime industry. This is where I gained most of my expertise with SQL Server.
Will The Greek
In 2004, Tracey and I had planned to leave London and return to Birmingham, but I was offered an opportunity to move my job to Greece (or Singapore) instead, and after spending the last 3 years moving around underground tunnels like a rat in London, the appeal of the Mediterranean sun won out and we moved to Athens (well, Piraeus actually, which is the port area in the south of the city - the distiction is important to the Greeks, who can be a bit snobby at times).
Despite my best efforts at times, I just can't learn Greek. I'm going to try again with a concerted effort this summer, but if it's still not happening I might have to just give it up as a bad job.
