jdost

Hello, my name is Jeff. I am a polyglot programming living and working in the Chicago area. I have a large interest in open source technologies and web development. This is a blog that I am using to write about my journey through the computer world. Hopefully I will write more in this than in the one I keep about my real life (which isn’t as boring as the lack of writing my convey). But this will hopefully be constricted only to my experiences dealing with computers (in whatever manner). So a little about myself…

I first started programming in my freshman year in college (in 2005), so I started really late. I have been on a feverish sprint to catch up to all of my peers and seniors who got big head starts. I started with C, in an intro to programming course, where I quickly excelled and decided on a career in software. I then was taught shell scripting (using /bin/ksh) and python. The following year I learned OOP with C++ and Java. During this time, I taught myself PHP and Javascript in an effort to teach myself web programming. After college, I worked as a hybrid web developer and C++ developer for a company. Then moved to Chicago with my wife, where she found her dream job.

I am primarily a Linux user. I made the full jump in 2010 to Ubuntu. A year later, at the urging of a friend, I switched to Arch, which I have loved and used since. Now for some of the random things that come with being a big Linux user… My window manager of choice (for now) is xmonad, even though I have been using subtle on my laptop off and on. I am a vim user (you can check out my config, which I have been slowly growing).

In terms of programming, the languages I know are a lot (Haskell, Python, Ruby, Javascript, Java, C++, C to name a few). I consider myself an “expert” in Python and Javascript. I am comfortable doing Java, Ruby, C++, or C (I am either rusty or lacking experience, but not familiarity). I would like to become more comfortable with Haskell, but it is not a language the offers many chances to really get to know it (my major experience is with my window manager). My experiences are primarily in web development and higher level networking, but I am comfortable in standalone applications and can always shake off the rust in low level hardware programming (my major focused in that area).