Why speak and write about programming? Because I can! Because this is an ambition that I’m suited for, that excites me, and that complements and enhances the rest of my career.
I’m a good developer, but had nowhere further to go with it until now. Project management? No thank you, I’ll stay technical. Architecture? I’ve never met an architect whose job I coveted.
Speaking and writing? Yes!
I grew up with this. My grandparents (James and Marti Hefley) were authors and publishers. Grandmarti was also Drama Director at the local college, so I traveled with the drama troupe and learned to project. I did copyediting for the books they published. I was embarrassed my last day of high school when the Honors English teacher excoriated the class for poor structure on their essays – “except for Jessi. She’s a better writer than 99% of people so she doesn’t have to follow these rules.” I’m well-suited for this.
I chose programming for this. My first internship, halfway through college, started with learning Arc/INFO. That took about two weeks, with no prior training in programming. My strength as a developer is not breadth of experience, but speed of learning new systems. Speaking and writing is all about learning – new paradigms, new topics, whatever people want to hear about, learn it and then write about it. All this learning is exciting.
I work at a good company for this. Daugherty is all about developing our consultants. I get opportunities to practice speaking, they get training for other consultants. I learn new frameworks and languages, our clients get more suggestions on what tools might help them. When I travel to conferences and write articles for technical website, Daugherty gets exposure. My managers at Daugherty provide advice, encouragement, and mentorship. It’s a great consulting company, and I will be a great asset.
All this adds up to a brand-spanking-new motivation to love my profession. I have a lot of catching up to do, a little bit of free time to do it in, and a couple key new friends to help me out. So far, this is a great adventure.
Enough about me. From now on, this technical blog is for technical posts about techinal-ologies. Technologies. For more personal info, look me up on Google Plus.