At the age of 13, I decided that I was going to become a software engineer so that I could make video games that were even better than the ones I grew up playing: Quake II, Starcraft, and Morrowind. I have not made any video games (yet), but I definitely made the right choice. By the time I got to college, I began seeing how vast and deep the many disciplines related to computing can be. My work experiences opened and blew my mind even more. My first professional experience was an extended internship at a company that produced electronics for the transportation industry, and it was here that I started to learn C# while writing Windows Embedded programs and trying to decipher the C code for Z80 firmware. I loved working closely with hardware, even when I was frustrated to no end. I left school to become an Emergency Medical Technician, and while I am grateful for that life experience, I wasn`t ready to put myself in that environment for the rest of my life. I started freshening up on software development and joined a local consulting firm. I have extensive experience with the .NET Framework through C# and F#. Since the majority of projects I have worked on have been web-based, I have had the chance to become a full-stack developer. I didn`t just learn JavaScript, I learned how to set up servers, advanced networking concepts, infrastructure as code, Linux administration, and every little thing I could so that I could volunteer for any task on a project and at least have a vague idea where to start working through things. Today, I am still fascinated by embedded devices and enjoy toying around with microcontrollers in my free time. I hope that I am able to transition into the IoT industry in the near future, and until then, am focusing most of my professional efforts on AWS and Azure. I`m also trying to learn new languages so that I can learn new ways of thinking about software design and new mental models from which I can reason from. When I am not writing code, I enjoy learning to produce music and playing bass guitar, messing with analog synthesizers, listening to progressive house/trance mixes, reading books, and working on cars. ©