handthrow

My name is Matt, I am in my early twenties and I am a Software Developer. I am just over halfway through my four-year Software Engineering course at the University of Portsmouth, UK and currently doing my placement year at a small CRM software company near London.

My job mainly consists of writing/maintaining bespoke extensions for “The Core Product”, but I also do database-y stuff and keep the coffee pots empty.

Some of my recent projects have included designing, writing and deploying integration to a popular accounts package, re-writing the telephony module of the core product to enable integration with TAPI devices, involvement in porting the core product and our event based XML API to .NET, as well as lots of smaller customer specific extensions.

Despite the fact that I am a great proponent of open source software and somewhat anti-Microsoft, I’ve found myself working in VB6/VB.NET & ASP/ASP.NET on a daily basis, although I am starting to appreciate these tools more now that I can see their benefits from a practical rather than idealistic perspective.

I am constantly [told to be] very grateful for my placement opportunity.

Outside of work I also enjoy programming, although not so much now that it is a full time occupation. My other hobbies mostly involve music and include my guitars, DJing and music production. I also enjoy working out and playing football, even if it means I’m aching all week.

I am a big fan of popular software blogs like Coding Horror and Worse Than Failure. My original plan was to write about similar topics, instead i seems to be random, and completely dependent on if I can be bothered to write something.

The name is from a Venetian Snares song.