Andrew Peters’ Blog

Seems like I’ve been double tagged. I shall use that as an excuse to be twice as terse!

How old were you when you started programming?

20.

How did you get started in programming?

I needed a career and Computer Science had to be more interesting than Econ 101 *shudder* - Conveniently, I actually enjoyed it.

What was your first language?

Turbo Pascal and C++ at university. PowerBuilder commercially - long live the Data Window!

What was the first real program you wrote?

Something at ‘varsity. Maybe a DFA/NFA Regex thingie.

What languages have you used since you started programming?

Turbo Pascal, C, C++, PowerBuilder, Java, PL/SQL, VB/Script, JavaScript, Ruby, C#, Haskell.

What was your first professional programming gig?

Working on a land information system at the New Zealand Department for Courts.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?

Yes.

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?

Find what you’re passionate about and do that.

What’s the most fun you’ve ever had… programming?

Whenever I can solve a challenging problem. A Haskell term unification program springs to mind. Along with the LightSpeed query engine and NHaml - variety is the key and constantly challenging yourself.

Over to:

- Turtle
- JD
- Newt
- Agile Kiwi
- Kirk

So by now you should know the drill - careof(JD):

1. I got into computers quite late, starting only at ‘varsity. At school I was pretty sports mad. In my final year I was captain of basketball, rowing and waterpolo.
2. I’ve used approximately fiveof my nine lives. The first was when I was 6 and fell head first through a glass cabinet. I still have a long scar just 5mm above my eye - whew! More recently I slid about 200 metres down ice on My Ruapehu whilst skiing somehow managing to bisect various rocks jutting out around me.
3. I live with my lovely wife, Kara and our two pooches, Ninja and Rosie. My wife’s parents live in Johannesburg and are in the game lodge industry. They own Idube Private Game Reserve and Lukimbi Safari Lodge. We got married at Lukimbi in the bush. (see photos)
4. I occasionally contribute to open-source projects. So far, I’ve had patches accepted into RoR an Castle.
5. For the last two NZ Tech Eds, I’ve been responsible for developing the Hands on Labs launcher application. It was very cool last year to see the labs full of eager punters all using my app. :-)

Ok, so as I’m such a laggard and everyone I know (with a blog) has already been tagged, I will just have to be leaf-node in the meme-tree.