So Who Am I?

The Early Years

Yeah, so I'm going to spare you the details of my childhood and fast forward to the end of my junior year of college (1998) where I had an internship at The American Society for Engineering Education in Washington, D.C. I was a student at The George Washington University and was in desperate need of some cash (surprise!), so my fraternity brother mentioned that ASEE needed somebody to help out with desktop support. I took the job and learned a ton. One day I was hanging out in the server room and stumbled on this book called The Cold Fusion Web Application Construction Kit, Second Edition by this guy named Ben Forta. (Yes, this was when ColdFusion was spelled "Cold Fusion" and Allaire was this small software company up near Boston.) In reality, I think I was more attracted to the cool logo of the hand holding a lightning bolt, but hey, I was curious! After a couple of days of mis-starts because I couldn't get the samples set up correctly, I was rolling. I should note here that I was not in any way studying computer science or engineering in college. I was studying biology (with an eye toward medical school). I point this out because I was so suprised that somebody without any sort of programming background could have a meager, yet functional, sample site set up in just a few days all from this one book. Needless to say, I was hooked! I asked my boss, Keith, if I could start picking up some smaller CF projects that the company had planned, to which he agreed (read: turning point of my intended career path).

Early Career

So graduation approached in 1999 and I was torn between following a career path I had always hoped for (medicine) and this new(-er) unknown path of web development. Well, the combination of watching my older brother (who is miles more intelligent than I am) struggle to get in to medical school (he eventually did) and this phenomenon called the "internet boom" convinced me that development was where I really wanted to be. So I continued on at ASEE for a bit longer as a full-time employee. We started working with a software consulting firm called Intelix, who took on some of the larger projects I simply couldn't or didn't have the experience to do (after all, while a non-profit, ASEE did have some critical applications that its members relied on). I instantly hit it off with Intelix's developers. They were so cool about not only doing the work we asked in a professional manner, but they also spent some "side" time helping me through some ColdFusion problems that I was having. After several months, I was getting a bit antsy at ASEE because I was the only ColdFusion developer and I knew I really needed to get myself into a situation where I could learn my craft at a higher level than just a book and some support forums. So I approached Intelix about a possible position with them, to which they were immediately receptive. I was hired in less than 24 hours! After putting in my notice at ASEE, I started with Intelix a couple of weeks later.

Intelix was an amazing company to work for (I say "was" because they have since been bought and my former colleagues have all moved on to other companies). I worked on all sorts of projects, from a major staffing application for Booz Allen and Hamilton using Oracle and ColdFusion 4/4.5 to a real estate application for Coldwell Realty using ASP 2.0 and SQL Server. But the most important thing I got from Intelix was the continued mentoring from Intelix's developers. Most of the people I worked directly with were my age (or within a couple of years), so it was a very natural, energetic environment for me. Brett, Mike, and Sam Farmer (who contributes frequently to CFDJ and the CF-talk mailing lists) were the 3 guys who had the most influence on me. Brett introduced me to the business side of things (proposals, calculating man hours, etc.), while Mike and Sam were these unbelievable developers who did things that I swore we couldn't use ColdFusion to solve.

Move to New York City

Even though things were great at Intelix, I always had a desire to move back closer to where I grew up (New Jersey). What better place to choose where I could be closer to my family yet still live in a great city? New York City. Unfortunately, Intelix didn't have a New York office (they preferred to stay local to Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia), so I had to leave my position there. I moved to New York in August of 2001. Thinking that I had some time to get settled and find the perfect job, I relaxed and got my bearings. I started interviewing a couple weeks after I got here and was actually a strong candidate for a position at a major financial company. Then 9/11 happened. From a job-standpoint (I'll leave the personal feelings out of this), most of the companies in the city froze all hiring until they could sort out the impact of the attacks. This meant my pending offer from the aforementioned financial institution was no longer. After a couple months of hanging in limbo due to the hiring freeze, I found a position as a commercial real estate research company and have been there ever since.

For a bit over 4 years now, I have done some pretty interesting work with ColdFusion (CF 4.5 to MX), Oracle (8i to 10g), Solaris (8 and 9) and Linux (Red Hat 7.x, ES 3). I have become the system administrator for the ColdFusion setup on top of my regular development duties. Needless to say, I've spent thousands of hours immersed in all sorts of problems related to ColdFusion, from system installations to tens of thousands of lines of code. I've also had a few projects that required integrating with other languages (Java, Python). My next project will make extensive use of Flex and ColdFusion, which is yet another suite of challenges that I'm looking forward to. We run our web site in a clustered setup of two physical boxes, which definitely adds a new dimension to both our physical infrastructure setup as well as our approach to coding. If you've never had to deal with a cluster, I envy you! I hope to get into some detail about my experiences over time.

What About You?

So what about you? If you've stayed with me this long, I thank you, but have a question for you. How did you get into development (or your currently field, if you're not actually developing)? As I said, I find it very important to have an understanding of the mind and experience behind somebody's advice, and it helps me gauge the angle from which they are making said advice. The problem with e-mail (and hence the various support lists) is that e-mail is faceless, and it's hard to determine if a response to a problem is a shot in the dark or one that comes from past experience.