Hey all,
I'm Amoun777, the extremely fortunate younger brother of perkiset (6-years apart). I was in 5'th grade when my spirally-eyed, overzealous, lifetime mentor was grooming me to find my full potential in software design and development, imposing numerous different languages on me before I had the pleasure of completely learning and exhausting the capacity of whatever comfort-zone code I was swimming in – the nerve!!
He has always been quick to jump ship, sometimes determining that the best tool for some specific, one-time job was in fact Object Cobol++# Builder with Foundation Classes, fearlessly employing the 4’th Dimensional ParaPascalHyperCardBase VIII expansion pack with JavAjax ScriptletBeans for “scalability” on the D-CorbaCOM Soap Services RPC wrapper farm. My only concern was the re-entrant Smalltalk API calls it relied on. Otherwise the decision seemed sound to me. Of course, at 16 years old many decisions do. In case my sarcasm isn’t clear, and in all seriousness, he is nothing short of a tech genius. If you only knew the extent of my lifetime battle with debilitating narcissism, you might appreciate just how true that statement is.
I have my own personal style and approach as an architect that sometimes varies but usually we're either not too far apart, or just realizing we're on the exact same page but mine has this ugly bespectacled opportunist embossed on each sheet. Yes, I drank the Microsoft punch when I helped grow a one-man shop into a 40 employee MS Gold Provider that was acquired by a ˝ billion firm in South Florida (ADS). These days I don’t have a need to make miracles out of mud, as was the case with so many limited languages of the past. Now it’s more a matter of effectively conducting an orchestra composed of numerous complex parts with more potential than ever to completely miscalculate the effects of rapidly scaling up (IE - design=RFd=Designer Downsized).
Moving from strictly software design and engineering over my 21+ years of experience, I’ve learned the fine art of retaining resources (sometimes referred to as “people”) who know the tools that are more commonly used, factoring in skill set availability, since perfect design elegance was – and still is – frequently in competition with the chances of success on large-scale projects, in my experience. Try arguing software/IT design elegance (aka - doing it right the first time) as your justification to acquire funding for something a company needs desperately; with a CFO who sees nothing but beans, bonuses, and a bird in the hand.
I actually began as an Apple then Macintosh Nazi, later moving deep into the Borland 3.1 C++ realm and then MFC. I've helped grow two successful startups and also have spent many years in mid and large companies such as Oracle, Risk Data, and now Digital Angel Corp (DOC: NASDAQ) as the Director of MIS. My level of expertise in database design and various other technologies, especially as they relate to programming, still seems to be quite solid compared to most pure senior engineers/software architects I've encountered. My true IT passion since I began on the path of n-tier development, however, has always been envisioning scalable designs from efficiency in infancy to massively scaled solutions without rewriting your way to success.
Adam
<edit>sorry A7 - forgot to mention the whole "Let's not share complete names here just yet" thing
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