have you read the 'about me' on my profile yet???
i have been programming since 1983. i still have floppies with some awesome old code on - lol
i have my own software house. no webpage. i freelance for a living. i am currently doing some coding for firefly studios.
my niche is inline assembler for realtime applications. about 25% of the OC3D_HM2011 is assembler.
i won't make it open source - it has some of my toolsets in it = PRICELESS
some of it could be reverse engineered (the Mono part could be reflected), i suppose, but that part would be useless without the rest of it
Heh, just read it now.
I think we've likely been programming for a similar amount of time. I started doing it work-wise in 1989 though had been a home-coder since the early 80's, went freelance in 1994...ran my own fairly successful consultancy for about 12 years. Had a large contract pulled out from under me at the zero hour (team had been pulled together, had started doing a lot of prep-work off the back of our prior project) only to find out another MUCH larger organisation had landed the job, for more than 10x what it'd have cost us. Back-hander springs to mind though they were somewhat corrupt times... To add insult to injury I found out that they'd taken ALL my data collected from a prior related project for themselves, data was technically the clients so I couldn't complain.
After being paid off I took over a year out just bumming around and re-thinking things. I did a couple of very different contracts (noddy stuff, easy money and NOT development) while I rethought things. Got an offer from the company I previously contracted for as a permy while I was working in some un-related area on site, hadn't really considered it before but I wasn't really focused on doing my own stuff any more, plus it was the chance to pick up some new skills. Took the role...got outsourced 7 months later then the company I got outsourced to was bought by one of the giants lol. Still there now, but sorta moved more into management, until a few months back...
Oh one funny thing, I found out that the company that "took" my prior contract, failed to deliver 3 years later (over 2.5 years later than I
would have delivered it in) - I guess they didn't understand all the data, databases and software they "inherited" from somewhere. They were millions over-budget and are now on a rather large companies black list...give me a certain degree of satisfaction that.
No worries re: your code, I can likely pull something together myself, was just interested is all & I'd not want to compromise your IP at all.
Actually, depending on how things go at work, I might end up setting out on my own again. It would mean re-establishing my companies (well, new company I wound up the old one years back) rep in the industry once more, plus I'd likely be doing newer web-based .net stuff...might be fun, though I'm not so hot on travelling all over the place like I once did - got a bit fat and lazy I reckon lol.
Anyway, went rather off topic there but I do find peoples backgrounds interesting & how they bring their skills to a forum like this to help the members.
Cheers,
Scoob.