Having been involved in Developer Diaries for one of our projects and noticing the prolific entries of one Mr Griffin I have decided to show that there are actually some Developers in MMCC. So here it is, my virgin post as one of them.
I guess a brief introduction is due; my name is Paul (duh) and if you visit our offices I’m the bearded one with long hair, usually ruining his hearing for later life with a reasonably broad range of musical genres.
I started writing software about 8 years ago at British Telecom (though in a clerical role) when one of my many fun and exciting tasks included pressing “PgDn” and counting entries in my job queue. Having an interest in writing software I looked into the Attachment macro language and about a month later via spare-time coding I had a message-box on my screen telling me the count. British Telecom being an equal opportunities company meant that mundane tasks were not limited to the CAs (Clerical Assistants, below the average clerical employee) and was soon asked to produce another version for my boss who did the same task but for 20-odd peoples worth of work. This went through many revisions including output to Excel eventually leading me to exceed the maximum file size for a macro and thus launched my coding experience in Microsoft’s Visual Basic, then at version 5.
In hindsight there were ~many~ flaws with the app, including my complete lack of knowledge regarding code maintenance (what’s code indenting?). Too look at it now makes my eyes bleed – it’s horrific. That said, it was in use for several years past my employment ending. In balance, I am still proud of my first application.
Having always had an interest in computers, this first app made me realise that a career in computing was feasible and so lead to my first proper programming job With a company in Hemel Hempstead, where I stayed for 3 years. There I met my mentor andvery good friend Mr J. A. McCall. He put me on the road with concepts such as design, requirements gathering, IU design and code layout and introduced me to the “Good Book” or as is more commonly known, “PeopleWare” by Timothy Lister and Tom DeMarco (if you can find the 2nd edition version that doesn’t require house re-mortgaging, go get it). During my time there I worked with VB4 (16-bit) to interface with ISA hardware that decoded proprietary TIFF files (xionics, for those really interested), the OFS file system extracting the mentioned xionics images and the odd access databases here and there primarily for local government / County Council data migrations.
My next appointment was to be in Milton Keynes working on PDAs, first as part of a 2-man team maintaining existing software and then leading a migration from embedded VB (oh my… I’m starting to feel sick.. even VB4 was nicer) to VB.Net and the Compact Framework. After 3 years it was time once again to move on (is anyone seeing a trend here?) and shortly after I started my time at MMCC – an appointment that would lead me to the cutting edge of technology.
Tags: MMCC, Paul Eden, Software Development