Day Job: IT Consulting

Hobbies: Beginner Triathlete, Guitar, Eating

Passion: I’ll spare you the bio and just fill you in on what I’m passionate about. Learning. To be more specific, I love to read and learn about all of the new technologies, platforms, and APIs available to developers. Technology has always interested me. I remember the first computer I ever got my hands on that my Dad kept in the rec room. We connected to the web with Prodigy and even though I didn’t understand what was going on, I thought it was awesome. If you’ve ever seen a great magic trick and wanted to know how it worked then you understand how I feel about technology. I see new mobile operating systems, Ruby on Rails, and all these open APIs and I want to know how they work. Fast forward from our dial-up 20 years ago, past high school, a CS degree from James Madison University (go Dukes), and the beginning of a career in IT Consulting and here we are! I’m still a tech nerd, and I’m still amazed when I find new technologies.

Recently I’ve been wrapped up in iPhone App Development. First I thought of it as a hobby, but it’s become a passion. It’s not just about my love for the iPhone (though I may be slowly converting into an Apple-maniac); its the ability to take an idea and create useful applications to share with people around the World. It’s been incredible to see my Apps downloaded in countries I’ve barely seen on a map!

So what now? Though I truly enjoy, and still do sit in front of the computer for hours, writing and debugging code till 3am, I’ve found that I like learning how to use different technologies, frameworks, and API’s even more. Even with my programming background, learning how to develop iPhone Apps took a serious amount of time and effort, which is fine but it prevented me from being able to learn about other mobile operating systems. I wasn’t able to devote enough time to App development and learn about other technologies like PHP and Ruby on Rails. That’s a bummer.

As a self taught App developer, I can appreciate the blogs, forums, and tutorials that are on the web today, but I always thought that it would be great if somebody would just help me out from time to time and gimme some code! Don’t just tell me about your custom buttons, let me use them. Teaching a man to fish is great, I get it, but come on! Sharing is caring!

What’s in it for me? I’m hoping, by starting TheAppTree and sharing some of my work, that I can lend enough support to motivate new developers to turn their own ideas into something that they can share. I also hope that I can meet people with similar interests, and find a way to turn my passion for learning and creating into a core value by which to find a career that I can be passionate about.

I hope that you'll visit TheAppTree.com