I'm Tom Cole, a software developer living in Northamptonshire in the UK.
My interest in computing started early and I hacked around with an old Sinclair QL before getting my first PC. I started programming in QBasic and later Visual Basic before heading off to study Software Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University.
Despite focusing on C++ and Java at university, on graduating I fell into a short contract role developing a website in C# and ASP.Net on .Net 1.1. Since then the majority of my career has been spent on the Microsoft technology stack, predominantly in heath tech.
As with many devs, over the years I've been given management responsibilities and I try to strike a balance between good management and keeping as hands on with code as time allows. I've been fortunate to work with some exceptional developers and managers, learning incredible amounts from them and attempt to channel that in my own work.
These days I'm most comfortable writing code in C# and Javascript however I've come to find the functional paradigm very appealing. I tend towards functional C# and when the project allows it I like to venture into Haskell and Purescript.
The intention of this blog is as an outlet for my ponderings on software and the software development process. As a result the opinions and statements are my own and not representative of my employer.
I've had a few attempts at posting regularly to this blog but have often lapsed, I resolve to try harder in the future.
The blog itself is hosted on Github Pages, using Jekyll and Markdown. The styling is adapted from the Clean Blog startbootstrap.com theme.