Gregg Irwin
Nampa, ID
I have developed software professionally since 1991, and unprofessionally for some time before that, covering a wide range of applications for pay, personal use, and education.
I have over 400 books on my shelves related to computers and
software development, all purchased at my own expense. I enjoy
this stuff, and I take it seriously.
My general approach is to be pragmatic; I don't focus on the
academic theory, or Computer Science aspect to the exclusion
of real world needs. Nor do I just sit down and hack code in
the hope that it will eventually work. Software is my craft
and my profession. I am a member of both the ACM and IEEE
Computer Society.
I have worked in a number of languges (Various BASICs, C,
Pascal/Delphi, Clipper, PHP, C#, SQL, REBOL). And I have studied
or evaluated the following to various degrees, though I haven't
used them for production work:
ASM, AWK, C++, Caml/OCaml, E, Eiffel, Erlang, Euphoria,
Forth, Haskell, Icon, Java, Javascript, Jorf, Lisp, Logo,
Oberon, Perl, Prolog, Python, Rexx, Ruby, Smalltalk
Other interests include state machines, Fuzzy Logic, TupleSpaces,
self-organizing systems, and collective intelligence. I'm also a
big fan of code generators, where applicable, and have written a
lot of them, along with many parsers and data transformation
systems.
Rather than trying to keep up with all current technologies,
I've chosen to specialize in a small number of tools and languages
that are generally applicable. I'm always happy to help clients
find other developers if they need specific skills I don't have
and don't want to acquire. For example, Java and XML are enormously
popular technologies; but neither match my aesthetic sense, so I
prefer not to spend my time dealing with their minutiae. Simple,
well-formed XML is fine and dandy, and handy for integration.
Through the early 1990s, I focused on Microsoft BASIC tools
(QuickBASIC and the BASIC Professional Development System). These
tools provided a productive IDE and a fully structured BASIC
language that supported pCode and inline assembly for rapid
development and optimum performance.
I transitioned to Visual BASIC--and Windows development--shortly
after it was released in 1991, becoming one of the first
Microsoft MVPs for Visual BASIC and keeping that status for
four years. VB, and heavy use of the Windows API, was my mainstay
until the end of 2001.
As a specialist, I'm always on the lookout for new tools; keeping
an eye on the horizon, to see where development is headed and
looking for ways to improve what we do. While working in Visual
BASIC, I evaluated many other tools and languages. I could see
the value and the appeal of many, but none struck me as a great
leap forward, until I discovered REBOL.
Since 2002 I have specialized in REBOL, and plan to do so for the
forseeable future. It provides a solid language, cross-platform
support, networking, easy deployment, and a design that focuses on
a direction Microsoft and many others are only now beginning to
pursue--but pursue with a vengeance--Domain Specific Languages.
It's a small community now, like Visual BASIC was in the early
days, but I believe it has a strong future.
I evaluate methodologies as I do languages, favoring those that
are nimble and light-weight, but there is no perfect system for
every project, so I cull best practices and apply them on a per
project basis.
I've been through structured development, got heavy into Object-
Oriented methods, and am now focusing on a domain specific design
approach. I don't follow all twelve rules of Agile development,
but my standard process definitely leans toward the iterative,
feedback-driven model. I also see a lot of value in Watts
Humphrey's Personal and Team Software Processes, and Test Driven
Development, though I'm not a strict adherent of either.
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