An interview with Will Storey, Software Architect | InDevs, Volume 1, Issue 1
I’ve long been fascinated with the stories behind the various programmers I encounter. How did they become who they are? How did they develop their sensibilities? And so on.
So, in this new series, InDevs, I am conducting a series of interviews with developers to answer these questions.
To kick things off, I’ve been fortunate enough to interview one of the software architects at the company I work for, MaxMind, Will Storey.
Without further ado, my initial questions:
How did you get started programming? Do you remember your first program?
How did you go from your first program to being good at programming?
Did anyone teach you to program? Do you have any study buddies or cohorts?
And Will’s responses:
I got seriously into programming in college. I think the first class I took was a Java course. Before that I had dabbled a bit, such as with editing IRC scripts and playing with QBasic as a child, and I took a Java game programming summer course when I was like 12, but I never really took to it or felt I was much good. Somehow the Java course clicked with me and I thought, hey I can do this! I ended up switching to computing science. I was originally doing an English major and had vague ideas of becoming a lawyer.
I don’t know what my first program was because I feel like I had several false starts. What I feel really got me into programming and kept my interest was writing IRC bot scripts, and an IRC quote website, kind of like my own version of bash.org but just for a few friends. I hacked on that like crazy and thought MySQL was awesome. I would be scared to go look at the code today!
I’m not sure how I ended up being any good. I think it was mainly stubborn practice. I wrote lots of IRC bot scripts and kept plugging away at them when they broke. I think I was lucky to find a type of project I was enthusiastic about that also let me share what I built with others. It kept me motivated to keep learning. I think having a passion project was crucial.
I had a lot of great teachers. I still remember and apply things from some of them today. I’m not sure they directly taught me how to program as I feel like it has been a continual spectrum of getting better and I will never be done, and a lot of it has been struggling independently with code. I do think the teachers I’ve had had a big impact on me though.
I have a friend I met on IRC that was doing the same degree as me at nearly the same time. We worked on a bunch of projects together. We still chat and we’re now good real life friends too. He’s one of the best programmers I know. Just reading his code was a challenge to get better because I always felt he was far beyond me. Taking his code and changing it as a way for me to get started is something I remember really helping me. Actually one of our coworkers worked with him at another company. Small world!
That wraps up our first issue. If you have any questions you would like to see me ask Will for issue two, let me know!