I bought a Kaypro II in 1983 and used it in college. It ran on CP/M. That’s an operating system that isn’t DOS or Windows. In fact, there were no graphical interfaces in computers in 1983. The Kaypro II personal computer was a marvel and a miracle. It is how I started programming.
My available languages were gwBasic and CR/M assembly. I learned and used both.
That’s how it started
I next learned VMS assembly because the organization for whom I was working as a chemist had a DEC machine, they couldn’t afford a programming language package for it. C for the DEC was more than $7,000. That was more money than I was making as a chemist. We did with what we had.
I even got paid for some of that Y2K foolishness, even though I told everyone it was foolishness.
Since then I’ve written mathematical, groundwater hydrology, surface water, contaminant migration, statistical, extrapolative, interpolative, probabilistic, and analytical models for computers. When I started text output from a 12-inch greenscreen was it.
Languages izzit?
I wrote those models in Basic, C, C++, Clipper, Pascal, Borland Builder, COBOL, Fortran, (Java, but don’t tell anyone), P/L SQL (oracle), T-SQL (Microsoft), and yes, MASM (assembly again). I now write business and analytical software in C#, T-SQL, JavaScript, and an odd assortment of frameworks, libraries, tools, and frankly, crutches.
Business Domains?
I’ve worked in pure chemistry, analytical chemistry, environmental chemistry, regulatory and statutory support for different government agencies, front office automation, back-office finance, billing, tracking, medicine, all manner of health care automation, and a host of small-to-large-business ERP and CRM systems.
I can tell you whether the project will succeed based on one metric: how many really excellent senior programmers who know the business domain are on the team. That’s it.
My skills take me through laboratory automation, mathematical modeling, automated contract compliance auditing, wholesale and production inventory, distribution, shipping, electronic data interchange, warehousing, manufacturing, purchase and payables, financial support for the general ledger, and I’ve worked in the art gallery, pet food, noodle distribution, citrus, cannabis, medical and surgical supplies, childhood immunizations with the CDC, purchase clearinghouses, precious metal smelting and recovery, risk assessment, and regulatory reporting business domains.
I even got paid for some of that Y2K foolishness, even though I told everyone it was foolishness.
Frameworks? Try this one simple trick.
I’ve worked in waterfall teams. I’ve worked in agile teams (no difference!). I’ve worked alone. I’ve worked with programming departments with 70 programmers.
I can tell you whether the project will succeed based on one metric: how many really excellent senior programmers who know the business domain are on the team. That’s it.
(There’s a correlation between an increase in manager to developer ratio and overall project failure, but it’s not the cause of failure. The greater the number of managers, the higher the likelihood of failure. The lower the number of managers, the higher the likelihood of success. This is only true if the first rule stands: you gotta have extremely good developers on the development team.)
So what would I put in a resume?
Where I worked? You’ve never heard of them unless they were government or FAANG (and I’ll never work for FAANG).
What I did? “I am trying to prove that locally-compact sets are dense in themselves in Hilbert Space.” Did you understand that? I didn’t think so.
How I can twist my participation into some story that makes me look like I saved the free world from Martian Invasion? I’m not going to brag when all of work is constant successes and constant failures and the real measure is whether the client would hire me again.
How long I worked somewhere? I’m a contractor. Some rock bands spend more time in a city than I have.
What languages I know? Once your write software in the first eight languages, the rest are echoes. Nobody who writes software really cares.
What’s better? Let’s talk. I can tell you if I think I can succeed. I’m brutally honest. I’ll even tell you if I think you want something that you don’t really want.
If you want something to take to the board? You don’t want me. I want autonomy, authority, and flexibility, and it already sounds like your bidniss++ doesn’t work that way.
If you want to talk, call me. Email me. Look through my web site. You’ll learn a lot more than if you read through two pages of lies and half-truths with good typography. You can do that, too, right here – but it’s still not a resume.
I wish you the best.
Note: Maybe this is the real reason. I distributed a resume around the horn on or about the year 2009. Some seven years later a recruiter sent me an email and told me that, based on the information I know only existed in that 2009 resume, I was the perfect fit as a(n) Hospital Administrator in St. Louis, MO. This can only happen when bad recruiting practices lead to resumes going through the “Buzzword Blender” and coming out looking like the stuff they served us in the Navy when they ran out of real food. I don’t want to be Buzzword Blender Fodder.
++: Some Tejas Lingo