Desi McAdam

I spent a bit of time down in Florida this summer, and I got the opportunity to meet and spend some time with Desi McAdam (blog). She's one of the founders of DevChix, a developer at HashRocket and an all-around really nice person. During my stay in May, she was kind enough to sit down and record her story for us.

Enjoy!

Desi McAdam - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Terry Haines

While in North Carolina, visiting family for my mother's 60th birthday and my nephew and neices' graduations, I had the opportunity to sit down with a special guest for a truly abc afternoon special "How I Got Started In Programming" video, my father, Terry Haines.

He programmed through the 70s, 80s and 90s, providing the opportunity for me to start becoming familiar with computers from a very early age. It was really a great pleasure to listen to how his career developed.

Oh, and happy father's day!

Enjoy!

Terry Haines from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Bryan Liles

Bryan Liles is a prominent thought leader in the Ruby community, focusing on showing people how to effectively test and manage the complexity in their systems. As I found when talking to him, he's also an amazingly warm person who really has an interest in helping people. This video was a lot of fun to do, and his offer at the end to come talk at schools is a first for our series.

I first heard Bryan say 'change the message or make it pass' during his talk, TATFT: A Layman's Guide, at acts_as_conference 2008, and it really resonated with me. The BDD workflow seems like it writes the code for you, allowing you to really focus on what the system need to be do, rather than what code needs to be written. Since I heard him say it, I've been repeating it to everyone that I work with.

As usual, I split this into 2 parts to make up for the amount of information in it. :)

Enjoy!

Part 1

Bryan Liles - How I Got Started In Programming Part I from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2

Bryan Liles - How I Got Started In Programming Part 2 from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

JB Rainsberger

JB Rainsberger is an agile coach and trainer, author of JUnit Recipes and, along with being a good friend, my employment addiction counselor. We met up at the first Code Retreat in Ann Arbor, and, not only was he kind enough to let me crash at his hotel, he sat in front of the camera and let me record his story.

JB is one of the most inspirational people that I know, both in his attitude towards computing and his attitude towards life. This is a great one that you won't want to miss, inspirational and funny at the same time.

Plus, bonus big beards!

I've split it into 2 parts, since our conversation ended up about an hour long.

Enjoy!

Part 1

JB Rainsberger - How I Got Started In Programming Part I from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2

JB Rainsberger - How I Got Started In Programming Part II from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Steven Bristol

Steven Bristol is a founder of LessEverything, a software development company in Jacksonville, FL. I met him at Acts As Conference 2008, and he was kind enough to sit down and tell us his story.

Enjoy!

Steven Bristol - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Nathaniel Talbott

Nathaniel Talbott (blog) is the creator of the Test::Unit framework in Ruby. He is the owner of Terralien, as well as a regular speaker at conferences. I had the pleasure to meet him at Acts As Conference, and he was kind enough to sit down and tell me his story, which, let me tell you, is a great one. He's definitely had a varied set of experiences in the industry, so there is a lot that we can learn from him.

Enjoy!

Part 1

Nathaniel Talbott Part 1 - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2

Nathaniel Talbott Part 2 - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Scott Gowell

I met Scott Gowell (blog) at Techsmith when I was given a nice tour there by Betsy Weber. She introduced us, and, looking around his office, I knew I had to get an interview with him. Why? Well, for one, it appeared he had a ton of large-size lego guys like in the video games. Hmmm... So, when Betsy stepped away for a meeting, I sat down with him and got his story; I'm glad I did.

Enjoy!


Scott Gowell - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Darryl Hogan

Darryl Hogan is an Architect Evangelist for Microsoft in the heartland district. I've known for him for a couple years now, both in a professional and a personal capacity, and I can't remember a time when he wasn't smiling and laughing. Okay, maybe when he had to deal with stuff I was working on. The fact that he is an architecture evangelist and his blog is called 'Tales from the Whiteboard' should tell you something about him.

Enjoy!


Daryl Hogan - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Rick Schummer

Rick Schummer was kind enough to sit down with me at the Microsoft MSDN Developer Conference in Detroit. He is the owner of White Light Computing and an organizer of the Southwest Fox Conference. His story is great, because his company does all their development in FoxPro. Fantastic. The few FoxPro people that I know always laugh when I tell them about some cool dynamic thing, as, according to them, they've had all that for years.

Enjoy!


Richard Schummer - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Chris Koenig

At the MSDN Developer Conference (MDC) in Detroit, Chris Koenig (blog) was kind enough to sit down and tell me his story. Chris is a developer evangelist for Microsoft, focusing on much warmer states than Michigan in January. I'm impressed that he was willing to come up for MDC in this cold, but we are lucky he did. I really like hearing about all the different computers that people had, some of which I had, myself.

Enjoy!


Chris Koenig - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Michael Eaton

Michael Eaton (blog) was kind enough to sit down with me at the Microsoft Developer Conference in Detroit, Michigan, and tell me his story. Michael has a great background, first looking to go into the military, then into law enforcement, and finally settling in programming. He's got a lot of experience as an independent consultant. He's a prolific blogger and an active member in the local community, attending and speaking at conferences and focusing on helping people hone their craft.

Michael was also the blogger who started the "How I Got Started In Programming" blog meme that swept the internet last year that was an inspiration for this video series.

As a result of some feedback regarding the length of some of the interviews, I've split the interview into two parts for easier viewing and enjoyment. Enjoy!

Part 1


Michael Eaton Part 1 - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Part 2


Michael Eaton Part 2 - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

I'll be at MSDN DevCon in Detroit

This Thursday, January 22, 2009, I'm going to be at the MSDN Developer Conference in Detroit. This is a really cool one-day event covering some of the highlights of the Microsoft PDC. Plus, Alan Stevens is running their "community courtyard" event, which focuses more on attendee involvement in discussions.

Given the amount of time there, I'm hoping to capture at least 10 stories. So, if you are there, feel free to find me and let's record your story.

I'll be spending most of my time at the community courtyard, talking to people about software craftsmanship and talking about pair-programming tours. I'll be arriving Wednesday night and leaving Friday morning, so I'll have plenty of time to do some interviews with people there.

After the conference, I'll be kicking off a week-long, Michigan journeyman tour, starting in Ann Arbor with Patrick Wilson-Welsh, then heading to Lansing to be hosted by Jeff McWherter.

I'll be at acts_as_conference

February 6th and 7th, I will be in Orlando, Florida, at acts_as_conference doing "How I Got Started In Programming" interviews with as many people as I can. Are you going to be there? Find me and a quiet place, then lets get story-telling.

Given the amount of time I'll be at the conference, I am going to try to get 10 interviews.

Looking at the speakers for the conference, it promises to be a great one. If you haven't signed up, you really should. DHH is going to be there; Nathaniel Talbot (who has already agreed to an interview); Yehuda Katz; Bryan Liles; Jim Weirich; the list just goes on. I'm incredibly excited to be there, both as an attendee and doing the interviews.

As an added benefit, Confreaks is recording the sessions, which means that I'll be able to watch the sessions later, freeing me up to really focus on my reason for being there: recording people's stories.

The trip to acts_as_conference is possible only through some incredibly generous sponsorship, coordinated amazingly (and partially funded) by Anthony Eden (blog) of chi.mp. Anthony contacted me on twitter to say that I should come down to interview the Ruby and Rails people at the conference; It wasn't long after that, and he had secured sponsorship to support the interview trip.

After the conference, I'll be embarking on a pair-programming tour through the area from February 8th to the 19th. If you are interested in hosting me for some pair-programming fun, please contact me.

I will be updating this entry with all the sponsor information, as I get more details.

Robert Dempsey of Atlantic Dominion Solutions and the conference chair, is providing me a ticket to the conference. I'll like to express thanks to him and the confererence for extending this to some guy who's wandering around programming with people.

Michael Kimsal

Michael Kimsal (blog) is an independent consultant, publisher/editor for GroovyMag, as well as as the upcoming JSMag, and host of the popular WebDevRadio podcast.

I met him for the first time at Raleigh Code Camp 2008 and really enjoyed talking to him. I was lucky enough to catch up with him at Codemash for an interview.

Michael's story is another great one stretching back to a childhood that a lot of us can relate to. I love talking to people who's formal training is something outside of computer science.

Enjoy!


Michael Kimsal - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Carl Franklin

Carl Franklin is the co-host of dotnetrocks, as well as several other podcasts. He's a well-known figure in the dotnet community, coming in from the visual basic community before that. I remember hearing about him back in the day when I was rocking the VB.

Carl's also a fantastic musician, and his prowess at various conference jamfests is legendary. He took part in Codemash 2009's jamfest and definitely rocked the house.

I very much appreciate him taking the time to sit down with me and tell us his story. It is a great one, and he has some great advice for people getting into the field. His experience with the podcasting world has exposed him to a ton of different people, and this has definitely influenced the way he looks at things.

Enjoy!


Carl Franklin - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Nate Hoellein

Nate Hoellein has an interesting story about how he got into programming.While he got into programming later in life, you can definitely hear the undercurrents of the ideas throughout his story.

Nate's blog has some very interesting entries on F#, including different ideas on testing framework integration.

Enjoy!


Nate Hoellein - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Richard Campbell

Richard Campbell is a prolific podcaster and well-known figure in the dotnet development community. At Codemash 2009, he was kind enough to take time out his own interviewing to sit with me and talk about his beginnings.

Richard is currently co-host of DotNetRocks, RunAsRadio and Mondays.

His current focus in development is on scalability, but I'll let him talk about what he's doing. Enjoy! This was a really fun conversation.


Richard Campbell - How I Got Started In Programming from Corey Haines on Vimeo.

Welcome to the "How I Got Started in Programming" interview series

In 2008, Michael Eaton started a blog meme with several questions related to the topic 'How did you get started in programming.' The questions spread like wildfire, reaching far and wide. You can find a lot of the answers by doing a google search or starting at Michael's blog and following the links. While the initial meme was great, it suffered from the fact that it was written. You can't see the organic nature of someone telling their story live: the body language, the flow of a conversation, etc.

During my initial pair-programming tour, I began the practice of interviewing my hosts and posting them to the journeyman blog. One of the questions I usually started with was 'how did you get started in this?' This is a question that I've asked people over the years, even before the tours, and I'm always fascinated by it. Once I started video-taping them, though, it really took off in my mind.

All of this has led to the idea of coupling my journeyman tours with interviewing people on how they got started in development; since I'm already going to be traveling around and meeting a lot of new people, why not just collecting everyone's story. One thing I loved about the flow of Michael Eaton's meme was that it was open to everyone; it wasn't just about the 'big names' in the field. That's my goal, too. While there will be some people in there who have recognizable names, I'm planning on interviewing everyone I can.

Fundamentally, most everyone likes to tell their story, and, just as important, most everyone likes to hear the story of others. Just like pair-programming with many different people in many different environments gives you a sense of the underlying concepts that span the specifics of software development, hearing how other people got started allows us to find underlying commonalities between ourselves and others.

So, that's the goal of this venture: tell your story, listen to others', understand that we are all in this together.

If you would like to be interviewed, please contact me via the contact information on the side bar.