Development Team Lead at Sage Business Software. I`m just getting back into Ruby on Rails after four years back in Java. I`ve been a software professional since 1994, but I was a computer geek long before that. My first exposure to computing was when I was 17, and a guy in the local pub worked on supercomputers for a living. This was about 1982, and this guy had built a a machine around an experimental 32 bit CPU in his bedroom. He got me into computing, and I ended up building a small machine based around a Zilog Z80, and writing a small control program for it using binary flip switches! I gradually moved onto the ZX Spectrum, and several other ancient machines, programming in whatever languages I could get for them, primarily BASIC, but also Pascal, Prolog, Forth, and, of course, assembly languages. During this time, I was working - now and then - as a stage manager in the theatre business. Eventiually, I decided to go back to college, and did a software engineering course focussing on the C language and Unix OS. Since leaving college - withoout competing my degree (I was broke, and offered a job), I worked in Visual Basic, then Java. I`ve worked in Java for about 16 years up to today. During this time, I`ve also spent about 3 years in RoR, and a couple of glorious, beautiful years working with ANSI C++ on Linux using the Intel TBB libraries. That was my favourite ever project from a technology perspective. Over the years, I`ve worked my way up the ladder a little, but recently decided I was moving too far from what I love doing. My previous job was at Barcalys Bank, and I found myself being transformed into a manager, against my will. So I`ve left that behind, and returned to my passion, which is leading a small team of highly skilled and dedicated developers using nice Agile methods, in a nice programming environment.
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