Ever since I was a little kid, software development has been my passion. I still
remember sitting in front of an Atari 800 computer, with the BASIC cartridge loaded
in, making it print "Hello, Dan" for the very first time. As I went through the BASIC
tutorial, it was almost magic, being able to get the computer to do whatever I
wanted, just by typing in these funny little symbols, limited only by my own
imagination and ingenuity. Throughout middle and high school, I latched on to any
ideas for projects I could get, moving from "Hello World" all the way to a simple First
Person Shooter engine, with dozens of projects in between. I learned C, then C4-4-,
tearing through any books I could find on anything remotely related to software
development. I was insatiable.
This passion carried me through my education at Purdue. Here there were more
resources available to me than I ever could have imagined as a kid. I studied new
languages, algorithms, compilers, higher mathematics, all with pretty much the
same fascination that drove me as a kid. And it was here that I learned truly how
much there was yet to learn.
So, now, in industry, this passion remains with me. There's certainly yet more to
learn, yet more problems to solve, and yet more to build. And for this, I am very
grateful.