Many hats, many skills a classic jack of all trades master of none. This may take a paragraph or two ...
I started with BASIC, and then Pascal and machine code, stripped copy protection of a few games in the '80s under the banner "Destroyed by the Releaser" after playing one that was "Released by the Destroyer". At the time this involved single stepping disassembled machine code to reverse engineer the security implementations.
They were all fairly simple up until they got very complicated. The first popular effort was encrypting the machine code, and running a little decrypting loader. Alas was easy to disassemble the decrypted code. The started making it much harder by distributing parcels of decryption across the run time and peppering the code base with checks. They won ... the aim of security is of course not to make something impenetrable, nothing is ... it is to make it so costly, expensive and time and resource consuming to penetrate that no-one can afford to ;-).
Long story short then I was a engineer working on steel production machinery, automation systems thereof, working on PDP 11/73s, MicroVax machines and an HPUX minicomputer for some while, then for a decade or so a globetrotting vagabond blogging under the moniker "The Thumb" for some years in the mid '90s (before the word "blog" existed really) moving into telecoms in the process and working on Windows NT systems and servers and a bit of Debian Linux, coding various solutions over time in FORTAN, Pascal, ASM, C, Ada, Perl.
Started building websites around then too, basic HTML with Perl CGI backends mostly and ended up working in the Telephone sector for a while, modelling GSM cells for find tuning in mountainous regions and then delivering, installing and training customers in telephone network management systems.
Have been working in support of Fisheries research for a good while now, since the arrival of children, and commitments, and debt and so on. And over that whole story have worked in mathematical modelling, liaison, technical writing, programming, customer support, quality assurance, project management, sales and more oft times managing teams in those disciplines.
With three children now, and reduced work hours (because I love my kids and want to spend time with them, unlike my dad) I have also come to recycle discard IT kit from various work places as web servers and more in my basement and deliver modest services therefrom for my various clubs and interests while I maintain treasury for a bike kitchen and a games club.
On the side, we have a quarter acre block close to town and a shortage of time to maintain it so I have for a long time hosted travellers on WWOOF, helpx.net, workaway.info and in recent years airbnb on the side and coordinate block and house maintenance.
My main interests in development at present are Python, Django, Microsoft TrueSkill and of course Javascript client-side and I run and host mainly LLUPP stacks (not LAMP or any other fashion as as I invented it worth clarifying that is Linux, Lighttpd, Uwsgi, Python, Postgresql - could throw a D on there for Django but hey I have a Bottle site too). Given all that I consider myself not a full stack but a super stack developer if you will, as I embrace not just the server up in my basement but the switches and routers as well and hence work a bit with OpenWRT, and maintain the local DNS, DHCP, DDNS and SSL needs as well.
I landed on dev.to for reasons lost to time. I think to be honest some of my searches which normally hit Stack Overflow pages (where I've contribute a good few questions and the odd answer) but increasingly on dev.to posts, and so over time have found more and more useful posts here that I've bookmarked and in time ended up pinning the site along with my other pinned sites that I keep an eye on in the background because interesting things waft by.
I'm a complete beginner dedicating more than 4 hours per day to learn how to code and manage my workflow. I enjoy slack-lining, mediocre homemade coffee, and digital painting.
Wow, what a history you have! Thanks for sharing all of that! I too bookmarked this site because I found a lot of answers here in addition to stack overflow.
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
We're a place where coders share, stay up-to-date and grow their careers.
Many hats, many skills a classic jack of all trades master of none. This may take a paragraph or two ...
I started with BASIC, and then Pascal and machine code, stripped copy protection of a few games in the '80s under the banner "Destroyed by the Releaser" after playing one that was "Released by the Destroyer". At the time this involved single stepping disassembled machine code to reverse engineer the security implementations.
They were all fairly simple up until they got very complicated. The first popular effort was encrypting the machine code, and running a little decrypting loader. Alas was easy to disassemble the decrypted code. The started making it much harder by distributing parcels of decryption across the run time and peppering the code base with checks. They won ... the aim of security is of course not to make something impenetrable, nothing is ... it is to make it so costly, expensive and time and resource consuming to penetrate that no-one can afford to ;-).
Long story short then I was a engineer working on steel production machinery, automation systems thereof, working on PDP 11/73s, MicroVax machines and an HPUX minicomputer for some while, then for a decade or so a globetrotting vagabond blogging under the moniker "The Thumb" for some years in the mid '90s (before the word "blog" existed really) moving into telecoms in the process and working on Windows NT systems and servers and a bit of Debian Linux, coding various solutions over time in FORTAN, Pascal, ASM, C, Ada, Perl.
Started building websites around then too, basic HTML with Perl CGI backends mostly and ended up working in the Telephone sector for a while, modelling GSM cells for find tuning in mountainous regions and then delivering, installing and training customers in telephone network management systems.
Have been working in support of Fisheries research for a good while now, since the arrival of children, and commitments, and debt and so on. And over that whole story have worked in mathematical modelling, liaison, technical writing, programming, customer support, quality assurance, project management, sales and more oft times managing teams in those disciplines.
With three children now, and reduced work hours (because I love my kids and want to spend time with them, unlike my dad) I have also come to recycle discard IT kit from various work places as web servers and more in my basement and deliver modest services therefrom for my various clubs and interests while I maintain treasury for a bike kitchen and a games club.
On the side, we have a quarter acre block close to town and a shortage of time to maintain it so I have for a long time hosted travellers on WWOOF, helpx.net, workaway.info and in recent years airbnb on the side and coordinate block and house maintenance.
My main interests in development at present are Python, Django, Microsoft TrueSkill and of course Javascript client-side and I run and host mainly LLUPP stacks (not LAMP or any other fashion as as I invented it worth clarifying that is Linux, Lighttpd, Uwsgi, Python, Postgresql - could throw a D on there for Django but hey I have a Bottle site too). Given all that I consider myself not a full stack but a super stack developer if you will, as I embrace not just the server up in my basement but the switches and routers as well and hence work a bit with OpenWRT, and maintain the local DNS, DHCP, DDNS and SSL needs as well.
I landed on dev.to for reasons lost to time. I think to be honest some of my searches which normally hit Stack Overflow pages (where I've contribute a good few questions and the odd answer) but increasingly on dev.to posts, and so over time have found more and more useful posts here that I've bookmarked and in time ended up pinning the site along with my other pinned sites that I keep an eye on in the background because interesting things waft by.
Wow, what a history you have! Thanks for sharing all of that! I too bookmarked this site because I found a lot of answers here in addition to stack overflow.