DEV Community

Cover image for Here I Am!
Mardix
Mardix

Posted on

Here I Am!

Hello, you can call me Mardix.

The Beginning

I was born in Haiti in 1982 (that makes me a millennial yay!). I did my primary and secondary school in an all boys Catholic school Petit Seminaire College St Martial.

The Beginner

I started programming when I was around 14~16 years old. My cousin brought an old-school computer at home, and it was fun to make little square boxes move on the screen. I remember my mother used to give me money to buy food in school, but I went to the bookstore to purchase computer books. I bought Java, C++, HTML books.

Back then, the internet wasn't widely available, and definitely Google as we know it now, StackOverflow and Github didn't exist yet. I started to learn programming on my own by reading and practicing what was in the books.

But I really got hooked, when I purchased a PHP book, that's when I started to love web programming more, because I didn't have to wait to compile the stuff that I created, and I could see the result right away.

The First Job

After my high school graduation in 2001, I participated in a small web development contest organized by someone who owned an Internet Cafe in Port-au-Prince (Haiti's capital). I won the first prize by making a colorful Carnival website for Haiti, which landed me my first job at the National Palace to work for the Press Corps for the president.

I also remember I bought my first cellphone a Nokia 5110, with my first paycheck. I felt like a rich kid.

The Migration and The War

I moved from Haiti to USA in 2002. I joined the US Army that same year, stationed in Fort Bragg NC, and was honored to fight along some of the great soldiers in the US Army in Iraq, from 2003-2004 for Operation Iraqi Freedom. (I will not discuss any Army experience in this post)

Upon returning from war, I purchased my first car, a silver 2001 Toyota Celica, that was a beauty. The dealership ripped me off; he sold me sticker that said "this car has anti-theft" for $2000. (Young and dumb mistake)

Upon finishing my 3years contract in the Army, I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina (beautiful city), and I, since then, made it my home.

The Family and The Professional

I'm now married, living in Concord N.C, with 1 wife, 3 boys and 1 dog.

I'm currently a Vice President Lead Tech Application Engineer at Bank of America. UI Stuff! (I will not discuss any work related topics)
I also have two Patent pending applications under my name, one related to the rendering of the DOM and another one for 5G technology.

The Purpose

I love music, I love reading news and I love programming. I also waste a lot of my times on Youtube.

I will be using dev.to to talk Javascript, front-end and Python mainly and share some projects. But here and there I may jump onto some random topics.

Oh, one more thing, I like beer, Guinness to be exact.

The end

... to be continued

Top comments (3)

Collapse
 
vuild profile image
Vuild

Welcome. Interesting journey & great intro.

I put "hello world". 😳

Welcome, to not-my-place. 👍

Guinness no. Guinness punch, maybe. If we are friends. If not, vodka in pint glasses.

Collapse
 
mardix profile image
Mardix

Thank you very much.

Yeah it has been a journey. But we've got to keep going.

And Guinness is my favorite, I will fallback to Heineken in the absence of Guinness, and for Vodka: Grey Goose or Ciroc, my friend :)

Thanks

Collapse
 
vuild profile image
Vuild

yw, millennials & their.....

Manners, hardwork, studying & Guinness(?).

We only had avocado & windows in my day.

Your bio says you love UI & tech. I hate it, so we should get along. 🤣

Good luck. 👍