An Origins Story

Okay... Let us start from the beginning.

As stated on the side, my name is Assad Q, but most of my friends call me Sid - that's another story. I've been programming since 2000ish (which makes me about 12). I picked up one of my dads books that stated, "Learn Visual Basic 5 in 21 days" and I figured I had 21 days, so... why not?

I learned about condition statements, looping, and how to write my own functions. This, as you can imagine at the turn of the century, put me way ahead of the curve for coders at my age.

I made my first video game that summer - my own version of Pac Man. So really, not my game per-say, but it was a start. In those days the logic I used to prevent a sprite from walking through a wall was if it's top left corner's pixels were the same as another image's then you would reverse the previous move. A bit primitive, but worked. The funny part was when we upgraded from Windows 95 to Windows 98, the pixel counts were off and the ghosts could walk through walls but you couldn't. So you would be playing and couldn't see the ghosts any more so you would go down one corner and all of the sudden a ghost would come out of no where and corner you! Mwhahahaha! It was hard to say the least.

I followed down the coding path through high school - I was the top of my class all 4 years. I went on to learn coding at the University of Toronto (St George Campus) and finished my degree just last year. Over my years at U of T, I grew to hate coding so much. It was too much that it took away the fun that I found in the process. I couldn't find what to do with my degree because I was sure I was not going to be a code monkey. In the fall of 2010 I was accepted to do a 1 year internship at RIM (yeah, Research In Motion...) I had the role of a Field Test Engineer. I loved this. I didn't have to code, but knowing about how the code worked was super useful. I quickly mastered the skills for this position and went on to expand on things and think outside the box.

Near the graduation point I was certain I wanted to go back to RIM and do this some more. But they didn't have any openings. As I applied to other tester positions I found a common theme - they needed someone who could code because they needed someone to expand their automation testing. I failed a lot of interviews for this reason. So thus, when RIM finally reach out to me to state that there might be a position available for me, I found myself having to decline because I knew in the end it wasn't sustainable for what I wanted to do. [I still recommend the position to people because it's fun, and you learn quite a bit; but it limits you a lot]. Anywho!

I started learning Ruby On Rails in my spare time after graduating [along with French which I still do, and juggling because... why not?]. This peaked a head hunter's interest and he reached out to me. He told me of a few job interviews he could set up for me. I accepted to take them and I aced them all. In the end everyone said the same - I may not have the technical experience they wanted, but I had the passion. In the end I found myself working at PatientOrderSets.com and I'm insanely happy I did. They are amazing.

I stumbled a lot along the way, but I've come into my own.

That's my origins story.
Next blog will be: "The Journey Begins" - What I learned in my first three months as an autonomous unit in a company and a recent grad.

Good Luck and Happy Testing
~L.T., D.H. Sid

Believe in Unicorns

I just want to get something on to this blog and then come back to it later.

I'm going to start with stating my goals so if anyone comes back to this post they can see what I intended.

I'm currently the only Test Engineer at a small start up company in Toronto. I love my job and it comes with a million different challenges. I was lucky that my superiors took on the approach of "do it yourself" and left me to it. At first this was super overwhelming but now I feel so empowered by it. I get the opportunity to try all the tools and processes that I'd like. I get to implement things the way I plan to. I've gotten some help along the way from the seniors at the company but for the most part I've been on my own.

My goal of this blog is to talk about some of these adventures I went through. The role models that have got me here. Along with other things that make life interesting.

Thanks and Happy Testing
~L.T, D.H. Sid.