My First day as a Programmer

Ever since I was 7 years old I was tinkering with code. I spent my childhood in QBasic, making space games and dreaming bigger than the language really went. Then it was on to ZZT, where I developed my first full length projects. I have always referred to myself as a “programmer”, because after all, I program. But it is only today that I can honestly say that I am, really and truly, a programmer.

I have a cubical with dual screens, I’ve been to a company lecture, I’ve reviewed private source code for which I’ve signed non-disclosure agreements, and I’ve finally been given a true standard to adhere to. It’s all very exciting.

The company I work for is called EDAS. They prepare products for engineering companies for testing equipment The software I’ll be working on uses test models that can be given different levels of vibration and pressure, then animated real-time. Extensive readouts are returned from this process, showing a map of stress levels throughout the blade as it is bent and abused. Pretty hardcore stuff!

The CEO of this organization is very driven by ethical standards. I will not have to feel like I’m in a place that undermines my own standards for business ethics, which are high. They also like Linux here, and every product is made cross-platform for Windows and Linux already. It’s not open source, of course… I doubt the companies that buy this software would want it to be since they can afford it, and need a guarantee of support.

At the moment I have nothing to do, so I typed this blog entry up. Hopefully I’ll still keep it well updated despite this 40-hour work week ( at 18$/hr ! )