13
Jun

How I Got Started With Programming

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Categories: life

Jim tagged me for the meme, so here’s how I got started…

How old were you when you started programming?
I wrote a few games (when you had to type in the games) on the TRS-80 when I was in elementary school. I think I wrote two or three of those games as a kid. I really didn’t start programming though until I was in college. I think I was 20 when I took my first programming class.

How did you get started in programming?
I took an internship to be a network engineer. I was lucky and got the internship, but there weren’t any projects for me to do. One day, the company I was working for asked me if I’d like to go hang out with the developers and see if I could help out. Fortunately, the developers were great mentors and they taught me how to write code. When a real networking position came up I declined it and kept hanging out with those same developers.

What was your first language?
Those TRS-80 games I wrote were in basic. The code I wrote in college was mostly VB.

What was the first real program you wrote?
I wrote an application for a law firm to track their hours for billing clients. Apparently, they had a hard time finding a time-tracking and billing application that would let each of the lawyers bill over 24 hours a day.

What was your first professional programming gig?
Doing (the hell that was) Windows DNA for a consulting firm while I was still in college.

If you know what you know now, would you have started programming?
Absolutely.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?
Focus on the quality of the people that you work with and use it as a guide to find the right job. Your best bet for progressing in the field is to work with people that are better than you and have the ability and the desire to mentor others.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had … programming?
My first agile project. XP by the book. I was very close to burning out and it re-ignited my passion for writing code and building valuable software. There were a ton of new things to learn and many things to re-think.

22
May

Taking Requests for BVC 1.0

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Categories: Uncategorized

I just recently updated BVC for a few requested features (options dialog, live skin switching, configurable polling, keyboard shortcuts, et cetera). None of these are big changes, but they do make the tool a little easier to interact with (no more modification of xml files).

I have a handful of things that I would like to change (mostly related to usability) and some code that I want to clean up before I put out a version 1.0 drop and I’ll probably get around to this sooner than later.

The one additional thing that I’d like to see are some requests for different types of visualizations that can be built into the tool. The current visualizations (there’s only two) are very simple and they seem to work very well. While these two visualizations are nice and simple, I’d like to put a few extra skins in place before doing the 1.0 drop.

If you’ve got any ideas or have any inspiration for what can/should be done, please head over to the GetSatisfaction site and put your ideas on the thread that was just started.

Currently, the two views are LiveStackedStatus and LiveUniformStatus (these will be given friendly names before the release). Here are the two views…

LiveUniformStatus

uniform status

LiveStackedStatus

stacked status

Both of these views are only relevant if you have multiple projects being hosted by your cruise instance. If you only have a single instance hosted, then you’ll only see one large box with your project status. The best view typically depends on the number of projects that you have available. If you have more than four projects hosted then LiveUniformStatus tends to give you the best view and four or fewer projects tends to look best with the LiveStackedStatus.

If you have non-visualization requests, you can also feel free to post them and I’ll take them into consideration as well.

28
Apr

Agile RTP - Andy Hunt on May 6th

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Categories: Uncategorized

Agile RTP

If you’re anywhere near Raleigh on May 6th, be sure to check out the Agile RTP meeting. We’ve got Andy Hunt coming to talk and I’m sure it’s going to be worth your time to attend. The title of the talk is Refactoring Your Wetware.

If I could point to two or three people that have shaped my thoughts about programming and development, Andy would be at the top of that list.

If I could only recommend one book to anyone doing development, it would be The Pragmatic Programmer. The book certainly changed the way that I think and has certainly shaped my career. Interestingly, it’s the only (at least partially) technical book that made my list of books that changed my life.

If you’re in the area (or if you feel like taking a road trip), be sure to come by and see Andy talk and participate in the discussion at Agile RTP.

15
Apr

Twitter In Plain English

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Categories: Uncategorized

I’ve turned into a Twitter junkie. There’s just something about it that makes me smile.

If you don’t get it (I didn’t at first either), check out this great video that I just ran across from Common Craft … on Vimeo…


Twitter in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

13
Apr

10 Weeks Later…

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Categories: Uncategorized

I’ve been very quiet on my blog for a while now, but I wanted to get everybody up to date on a few things…

#1) First and foremost, I’m a dad :)

Whitney and I had our first child (Haley Kay Carey) on January 30th. Everyone is doing wonderful and I’m loving being a dad. Right now, this is where the majority of my focus has been channeled. Haley is doing awesome, Whitney is doing awesome, and I’m doing awesome.

You can find our pictures of Haley on Flickr at: http://flickr.com/photos/thecareyfam/tags/haley/

Haley Pics

#2) If you’re interested in what I’m doing (until I get back to blogging more), I’m using Twitter frequently. It’s much easier to do the micro-blog thing with Twitter.

You can find my Twitter profile at: http://twitter.com//bencarey

#3) I created a small web page to hold the links to my small projects and experiments. There’s not much on the site right now, but there will be as time moves on. I have a lot of little experiments that I’d like to try and this will probably be where I link them up (I’m sure I’ll blog about them as well).

The new site is: http://www.hellokensho.com

#4) I launched Omakase. This was a little idea to experiment with Rails, iPhone development, and some ideas for exploring ways to make micro-applications. Omakase does one thing… it makes decisions for you. I’ll post more about it after I finish cleaning it up a bit. The site was written for the iPhone, but it does have a traditional browser version as well. Currently, the browser site looks the best in Safari.

You can find Omakase at: http://www.iloveomakase.com

#5) I moved my blog and site host over to Media Temple. As part of that move, I wiped out all of the categories for my old blog entries. I did this on purpose. I do blog about a mixture of items (technology, business, development, life, travel, etc.) and I decided that all of the categories just weren’t worth the effort to maintain them.

I’ll get back to blogging, speaking, and the various communities before too much longer. For now, I’m enjoying a bit of a break and soaking up the new addition to the family.

09
Mar

Building Software Like Curitiba

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Categories: events and presentations

I presented a lightning talk at the Agile RTP meetup this past week. As promised, here’s the slides (cc-by/sa)…

31
Jan

Nature Doesn’t Have A Design Problem

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Categories: life

A great quote from Cradle to Cradle…

“Consider this: All ants on the planet, taken together, have a biomass greater than that of humans. Ants have been incredibly industrious for millions of years. Yet their productiveness nourishes plants, animals, and soil. Human industry has been in full swing for little over a century, yet it has brought about a decline in almost every ecosystem on the planet. Nature doesn’t have a design problem. People do.”

- Cradle To Cradle

19
Jan

Seed Conference

By admin 2 Comments
Categories: business, events and learning

I just returned from the Seed Conference and all I can say is wow. This was a wonderful, thought-provoking, and inspirational event. If another one comes up, I highly recommend attending.

There was a lot of interesting information that was presented both directly and in-between the lines of the talks. It’s great to see so many inspiring individuals giving talks and hanging out at the conference. There were a ton of fresh ideas and a strong sense of innovation that was felt throughout the day.

Carlos Segura, Jason Fried, Edward Lifson, and Jim Coudal all gave great talks with good content.

If I had to boil it down to a few over-arching themes - the conference was really about truth, happiness, pride, innovation, and getting real.

I also can’t say enough about the location of the event. As someone who sits in a typical office environment most of the week, it was refreshing to be in an environment that encourages learning and has inspiration at every turn. It was also nice to be surrounded by individuals that are pushing the boundaries of our industry and unsatisfied with the status quo.

Over the next week or so, I’ll try to get around to posting some of the notes that I have from the event (1/2 a Moleskine full).

20
Dec

CodeMash - Don’t Miss It

By admin 1 Comment
Categories: codemash and events

CodeMash is a wonderful conference. This will be the second year of the conference and it’s well worth your time to attend. Unfortunately, I’m not going to make it this year (baby on the way), but I would highly recommend that you check it out if you get a chance.

There’s a great lineup of talks with some great speakers (Scott Hanselman, Jim Holmes, Neal Ford, Bruce Eckel, Joe O’Brien, Dave Donaldson, Josh Holmes, Dick Wall, and many others).

It’s certainly $175 well spent.

18
Dec

Books That Changed My Life

By admin 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized, books and community

I was excited to see James put up 22books. The site is off to a great start and reading is something that I’m very passionate about. I read a lot of books and I frequently check in with others about what they are reading.

A tradition that I’ve had over the past ten or so years of my career has been to ask others “What books have you read that have changed your life?”

I ask this question for a couple of reasons…

  • It gives you an idea of an individual’s personality.
  • It gives you an idea of where a person’s values and belief system are.
  • It helps you understand a person’s world-view
  • It keeps my queue of books-to-read fresh :)

I’ve asked this to quite a few people over the years. I’ve asked co-workers, friends, managers, CEOs, and clients. Over the years of asking this question, I’ve never regretted it (although I have had some people that declined to answer it).

I love that James has integrated this concept into 22books as a list category. I’m excited to see what others add to their list.

If you’re interested, my list is published on the site. Some of these books are fairly straight-forward in their contribution to my favorites list and others have stories behind them. Regardless of the history, I can certainly recommend all of them.

Happy reading!

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