What I Do

I'm it!!!  Looks like I was recently tagged by Brian Donahue of (Philly ALT.NET fame-yes I said fame!) as part of the "What I Do" craze that currently is working it's way around the .NET blog-o-sphere.

I'm currently employed as a Software Developer for Matrix Solutions in Pittsburgh, PA.  We are the manufacturers of Matrix Plus, the industry leading CRM system targeted to sales professionals in the advertising and media industry.  We're lucky enough to have a pretty varied customer base serving organizations from your local, small town radio station all the way up to some of the largest television networks in the world, both in the English and Spanish language markets.  This gives us a great breadth of customers and needs to serve which never fails to ensure that our work stays interesting.

Our flagship product is a pure .NET, enterprise level application with smart client front end and is written in C#.  Although this is the product is where I spend the vast majority of my time, I do get the chance to work with other technologies and languages on our internal products and utilities such as Python, PHP (on a WAMP stack), and, as of late, a lot of Boo.

Away from the code, I'm also responsible for overhauling our software development methodology into a more agile/XP influenced process which includes introducing and establishing tangible techniques such as continuous integration and test-driven development as well as promoting more fundamental ideas such as design patterns and agile design principles.  I'm incredibly lucky since I get to work with a team of very talented developers who are open minded and very excited about moving us all forward as a team and are enthusiastic and passionate about producing great software.  I'm also very lucky in the sense that I happen to work for a great Directory of Software Development who takes process and skill improvement very seriously, trusts his team enough to give us a lot of leeway with the technologies and techniques that we use, and manages to remain patient and unwaveringly supportive as we--okay "I"--make mistakes along the way.  Many, many mistakes along the way.

Community wise, I'm active in the local Pittsburgh .NET User Group and the organizer of the local Pittsburgh ALT.NET group.  After spring, I'm planning on becoming more involved with the local Coding Dojo again, as well.  I also try to stay involved in the Open Source community through the creation of such projects as MbUnitForms which is a port of Luke Maxon's excellent NUnitForms to MbUnit, NStub which is a 1-to-1 unit test stub generator, and Jester.NET which is a mutation testing tool I'm hoping to release a beta of by the end of this quarter (Shhh!  It's not out yet!).  I've also had the pleasure of contributing to the Ascend.Net WinForms control toolkit.

I enjoy writing about programming and software development through my blog, which if you're reading this you've already found, and I'm currently in talks with a well known publisher of technical books about publishing my own software development title in 2008.  In the interest of non-disclosure, however, I'll leave the subject and publishing company in question for another time.  However, I'll keep old blog updated as things progress.

On a personal note, I'm currently residing in north-central West Virginia with my my fiance, Mary (we'll be getting married this September) two cats, and three goldfish--all of which are named for sushi dishes--and the newest blessing upon our household-our Wii (look us up, our nickname is "Wiiener").

So, in the interest of passing on the love, I'm tagging three people of my own.  You're now "it"...

Tony Pitluga

Greg Akins