Writing my introductory post led me to think of some of the many people who have taught me important lessons. One of those people was Duc Tran, an engineer I knew when I was a technician at Rixon. He taught me a technique for using an index register to keep track of current state, instead of relying on a flock of boolean values and “if” statements. That revelation changed the path of my life, and led me to seeking simpler, yet more powerful, constructs. I was caught in a lay-off (my first of many) not many months later, and I’ve lost track of Duc Tran. I doubt that he’s aware of the influence he had.
It’s perhaps a characteristic of the human condition that we are often unaware of the good we do in the world. We must keep trying in spite of the lack of feedback.
Hello. My name is George Dinwiddie and I’m a software consultant and coach. My job is helping software development teams to become more effective, while helping them accomplish their current project.
I started out in electronics. My first job was a TV-radio repairman when I was 14. After some detours such as being an English major in college, a theatre lighting and sound technician, and an organic vegetable farmer, I came back to electronics and ended up as an Engineering technician developing modems. As it happened, this was at the time that hardware was being replaced with software, and I wrote more firmware than I designed circuits.
I’ve since moved from embedded systems to primarily working on business systems–from assembly language, through procedural C and Pascal, to object-oriented Java and currently learning Ruby. And I’ve played with a lot of things in between. Throughout it all, I’ve tried to learn the best ways of doing things. And I’ve certainly learned a lot. I’m grateful to many people who, directly or through their writings, have taught me so much. And I’m very much aware that there’s an infinite amount more to learn.
The purpose of this blog is to share some of what I’ve learned in a more informal manner than the wiki that I’ve been using. Oh, I’ll continue to use that, too, but this vehicle will allow me to publish thoughts without organizing them into a structure. It will also allow for others to leave comments in reply. I’m looking forward to that! Please do let me know what you think.