At my company’s year-end meeting, our CEO asked us to send him an e-mail with our overall impression of the company and one piece of feedback, positive or negative.

I wrote that my overall impression was positive, but one complaint I had was that there’s no clear path for transitioning from my department to a development position.

Yesterday, the CEO responded to my message asking why I wanted to be involved in development. I answered that in my time supporting our product, I’ve realized that much of the work I do could have been avoided with some forethought during the design stage. I told him that I felt I could contribute more significantly in a programming position rather than a support position.

I basically treated the exchange like part of an interview. Hopefully, this will get me recognized.

The title of this post is the title of the first post added when you install WordPress. It’s also the conventional first program written by computer science students. It’s an appropriate introduction for this blog.

I have a technical job, but I’m interested in moving from support to development. I lack formal education and work experience with computer programming, but it was always a part of my home life, and I’ve always been interested in it. My mother taught me that technical expertise alone doesn’t make a good programmer. Good programmers think in a way that makes them good general problem solvers, and that’s a skill I think I have.

This blog will chronicle my effort at personal and professional development. I plan to write about things I am learning, personal programming projects, and the challenges I run into. I hope that you find something here that helps you with your own development as a programmer.