I was able to spend some time earlier this year working on a greenfield startup project. I spent most of my time building up a lean and nimble stack, primarily using Apache Wicket; arguably the best framework invented in the Java-sphere. We focused on a strong technical underpinning on the application side, and Rackspace Cloud and the Limelight CDN (content delivery network) on the infrastructure side. The application is easy to enhance and the infrastructure is incredibly elastic. More recently I switched from being completely independent to working with a niche consulting firm in Toronto that specializes in the financial markets.

I was officially knighted as a Senior Developer and my ninja-level Java skills were starting to impress everyone except my wife; she was too busy looting corpses (she had a Warcraft relapse). I started diving into a new framework called Spring. I learned all about ORMs and Hibernate, AoP, DI, loose coupling, and lazy loading. We started writing automated unit tests in full force and set up a continuous integration server. Throw in some SOAP for good measure and you have a really full (few) years!

I received my Intermediate Developer badge and began writing less client/server Swing-based applications and more web applications. We primarily used Servlet/JSP in '03 (I promise to never use two-digit years in calculations). I learned my first design pattern (guess which one?) and a little framework called Struts. I was exposed to everything from UML to design patterns to EJB. I also got married in 2003! She's a Java developer too. Our dinner conversations are fascinating.

I started working full-time after finishing a second internship at one of the big five Canadian banks and graduating from college. My first job was writing COBOL applications to help detect cheque-fraud. People used to write cheques, seriously! It was cool to gain some first-hand experience in how people used to code back in the late 1800's.

I enrolled in a computer programmer / analyst course at an Ontario College where I learned all sorts of neat things, like loops, sorting algorithms, and how delicious personal-sized Dominos pizzas really are. I had a blast, learned a lot, and kept asking myself if people really got paid to do this stuff; it just seemed like so much fun.