Hi, my name is Jordan Cleigh, and I have been using computers for as long as I can remember.
My first home PC was an IBM PC-compatible 8086 machine with dual 5 1/4” floppy drives and no hard drive. I remember loading up MS-DOS so I could teach myself how to program BASIC, watching the simple lines of code appear on a small amber on black CRT screen.
The next computer my family purchased had a first-gen Pentium processor, 3.5” floppy, and a CD-R drive. This is the machine that introduced me to Windows 3.11, which we later upgraded to Windows 95. I cannot even fathom a guess at how many hours were spent playing Warcraft II on that computer.
Over the years, I would scavenge, build, upgrade, and tinker with any PC I could get my hands on. Diving in to these machines gave me countless hours of joy.
Always ahead of the curve, I was prompted to attend college-level C++ and Visual Basic classes while in 9th grade. I quickly discovered a distaste for code that needed compiled and spent most of my energy self-learning web development. This was back in the early days of dial-up, IRC, and static HTML websites - a very different experience than developing for the modern web.
In my free time, I created and worked on video game fan websites, the most “successful” of which was Squareality, a site devoted to Squaresoft and the many wonderful role-playing games the company produced. I managed a small group of international volunteer “staff” who assisted with creating the site and its content.
Fast forward a few years, and I graduated from a small business school with an Associate’s degree in Computer Science. The education provided was much more “checking the box” than it was practical. I remember learning how to design and develop using the full Macromedia suite and the ins-and-outs of networking technologies that predated Ethernet.
I applied at several local web design agencies after graduation, but having zero professional network or tangible experience led to a quick and disheartening need to find any job.
I worked a series of unrelated jobs for the next several years and was always the de facto IT expert at most of them. I also assisted dozens of small businesses, friends, and family with freelance web and print design and IT troubleshooting on the side.
After a while, I decided it was time to return to my roots and took a few non-credit courses to catch me up to speed in C#/.NET at the local community college. I applied at several companies in the area and finally landed my first full-time software developer role nearly 15 years after graduating college.
I learned the role quickly, and rocketed through the organization, becoming a Senior Engineer and Tech Lead of a team of seven engineers besides myself at its peak. Nearly everything I know about the day-to-day operation of software development, both good and bad, can be attributed to the hands-on learning I received at this company and the mentorship I received from the more experienced engineers.
I have since moved on from that company and have enjoyed all the benefits that come with a career in IT, particularly one in software engineering.
A desire to learn is what ultimately drives me. I am creating this blog to share with others the things I have experienced in hopes of helping others learn. The software community is one that is best served by collaborating openly and sharing the particular knowledge we each hold.
