Tina and me at a wedding
Hey! My name is Stefan »Tank« Schindler and I'm living in Bocholt, Germany together with my lovely girlfriend Tina. I was born in 1985, so I'm approx. 24 years old.
I'm currently studying Information Technology (focus on applied computer science) in the 5th semester, and I hope to graduate in 2010. For some months I've been working as a tutor in programming – and I love it! It's great to teach students in something you've got as a passion.
My passion
Speaking of that, I have to write some lines about my biggest passion in life: Programming. I've been doing that for many many years. It must had been around 1990/1991 when my father first showed me what crazy stuff he was able to do with BASIC on a Commodore 64 (also called the breadbox).
Of course I did not really start to program at an age of 5/6 – I'm not a genius. ;-) But later my father bought an Amiga 500 that had the programming language Blitz BASIC installed. Mainly a language for creating games. But well, I didn't really know what to do, or at least I don't remember that I've done anything interesting with that.
So my father had to continue buying computers, he he. When he got a PC (386), I found out about QBASIC, a BASIC interpreter/programming language by Microsoft. And I guess many of you are groaning right now, because QBASIC has been the first programming language ever for many people.
My first steps were simple text adventures. Keep in mind I've been still very young when I started with QBASIC, so my main goal was – of course! – creating cool games for me and my friends. And what should I say, I've done much (incomplete) stuff. I remember that it was absolutely cool to learn completely new stuff and getting a lot of those aha experiences.
After doing text adventures, I discovered the SCREEN command that allowed to enter several graphics modes. So I did some graphical games, like really small puzzles. »Good ol' days!« Whatever, it was fun like hell to be on such a low level of programming. Mouse support? Talk to the serial port! ;-)
Months/years later, my father (again!) got a copy of Microsoft Visual Basic 3. And shit, that was awesome! You could design real graphical applications, with the familiar look and feel of the Windows operating system. I remember I did a lot of hot stuff with that – at least I thought it was hot those days. ;-)
Up to Visual Basic 6 I still followed the BASIC programming language. But then I heard about other languages: Perl and C. I tried out Perl at first. Well, what the hell! The syntax completely pissed me off, so I left before I've really learned anything from it. Then C was kinda magic – too bad the IDE I had was Borland C++ Builder. Stupid set of tools if you asked me.
However, like most developer people one day do under Windows, I installed Visual C++ 6 by Microsoft. And that was really a great IDE, although the compiler sucked. ;-) I did my first steps with console programs, then went to GUIs using the MFC and later some easy stuff with OpenGL and Windows Sockets.
During that time I had a huge interest in isometric multiplayer games, since I played a popular one myself: Ultima Online. For the latter I was also running an own shard (server that emulates the official one so that users could connect to it with the original Ultima Online gaming client).
My passion today
For all the years I just gave you an overview of, my programming was more like »Main point is: It works!«. But that didn't last forever – thank you, god, for that. ;-)
So I read a lot of books and articles about professional C++ programming. Some are written by German authors, but some are from members of the C++ committee and the founder of C++ itself. It's overwhelming what experience and knowledge those guys have!
So these days I mostly try to program in a clean and modern way, but am of course still learning a lot. If you find glitches in my source code, pleaaaase contact me. I'd love to hear about them and improve my programming.
Other computer hobbies
Besides C++, I began to love programming with Python. In my opinion a very strong language. If you haven't yet, you should definitely check it out.
I also love to play the free game Sauerbraten (Cube 2). You can usually find me on the PSL server playing Insta CTF.
And last but not least another big hobby is flight simulation with Flight Simulator X by Microsoft and X-Plane 9 by Austin Meyers. I've also been to a real Airbus simulator once! An experience I would recommend to everybody, really.
Real life stuff
Of course I also like the usual stuff like making party, listening to music (electronic music by the way) and mixing music with my two turntables. But since this site is about development, I won't go into detail here. ;-)
Likes and dislikes
Okay, to finish this page, let's get a bit more personal!
Dislikes:
- emacs – A great operating system, just lacks a good editor!
- Java – Worse, worse, worse!
- PHP – I did a lot of stuff in it, but it's one of the worst languages out there. Never seen such big inconsistencies.
- Apple – I prefer pears. ;-) (got it?)
Likes:
- vim – The one and only real editor!
- Debian GNU/Linux – The one and only Linux distribution!