My name is Gareth, but known by 'Dusty' to all those around me.
I am current studying various short courses from UNISA in the field of Computer Science in order to achieve a Bsc in Computer Science with emphasis on Information Systems. I recently obtained a certificate from UNISA in Strategic Information Systems in Practice.
I come from a background of IT End User Support, both to home users and in corporate environments.
I've studied various small courses around supporting *NIX systems and more recently, around Information Systems and Enterprise Architecture.
I've always had an interest in computers and always found it difficult to get into software development without any mentoring, tutoring or studies. The company I now work for has mentored me, is tutoring me and helping me further my studies in development so as to better support their products, all developed in Smalltalk.
I have a little experience in Javascript, HTML, CSS and anything else we all played with back in geocities days. I did study Turbo Pascal at school and was told by other developers to avoid certain languages, which has limited my experience and exposure to large parts of development.
I have been programming in Pharo Smalltalk and VisualAge Smalltalk for the past year. My projects involve rewriting and improving the companies current software offerings using new techniques and technologies available today.
Having tried various languages (Delphi, C) I've found that Smalltalk is easier to understand, more productive (thanks to its massive library of classes) and a lot more fun to write software in. I've gone back to other languages with my new found knowledge of development and can't fathom writing software in anything but Smalltalk.
I have many ideas and projects that I current develop in Smalltalk. I come from an OpenSource background and as far as possible, keep all my projects OpenSourced under the BSD or MIT Licenses. I plan to continue this as a life long career.
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