Problem solving for the community
When I tell people what I do here as Senior Software Design Engineer at Palo Alto Software, I sometimes get the glazed eye look when I explain that I make business planning software. Unless you’re a business major or have a need for business planning, it’s a rare event for people to get very excited over business planning software. But designing and writing Business Plan Pro has been anything but boring! Everyday I’m challenged with new problems and need to think outside the box to deliver what is hands down, the best business planning software on the market. I get to use the latest cutting edge technologies and learn new things daily. To me programming is my art as I always strive to the point of obsession for a clean, robust and efficient design; taking great pride in the success of our products.
I could be writing the latest version of Halo for the Xbox and I honestly think I would be having just as much fun and even learn many of the same things. Programming is largely transferrable to many different types of applications. I can write a module for Business Plan Pro and if designed well, could easily reuse it in a huge variety of applications. Almost no part of our application is so specific to Business Plan Pro that it couldn’t be reasonably used in a multitude of contexts.
Which is why I love when I have time to share some of the techniques I’ve used while building our software with other coders. The piece of knowledge I was able to share with my fellow programmers most recently had to do with some conclusions I came to while making our application responsive and user-friendly during long operations. If you’re as geeky as me you can go off to the site and read the article. http://www.codeproject.com/KB/progress/ProperProgress.aspx
The nice part about this article was that I was able to prove to myself just how useful the things I develop for Business Plan Pro are and can be to other developers because the other day, my article won an award as best VB.NET article of the month on CodeProject (the premier site for sharing code, tips, and techniques amongst developers). Besides winning over $4,000 in software prizes, I now have the honor of knowing that my experience has helped the community in some way.
Stay passionate about whatever you do and we can all grow from each other’s knowledge,
Tim Greenfield
Senior Software Design Engineer
Palo Alto Software
TimG, I had no idea about the VB.NET award, that’s fantastic! Congratulations!!