“Don’t compare yourself with anyone in this world…if you do so, you are insulting yourself.”
— Bill Gates
I am Brian Swiger, a father of two boys, married to my beautiful wife, living in Tampa, Florida.
Where It All Started#
Before I ever typed a line of code, I was a military kid. My father served 24 years in the United States Air Force, retiring as a Chief Master Sergeant — the highest enlisted rank you can achieve. He was deployed often and away a lot for his job, but he always made time to teach me things when he was home. One of those things? Typing R-U-N on a Commodore VIC-20. That one moment set everything in motion.
I’m equally proud of my mother, who raised me and my sister while my father served. She held our family together through every deployment, every move, and every long stretch apart. My mom also ran her own pet grooming business — she’s always been a hard worker and an entrepreneur at heart. We’ve been a family of dog lovers since I was little and have had fur babies for as long as I can remember.
The Tech Journey#
In addition to the VIC-20, I used to demo the capabilities of the Apple II series of computers at various trade shows. My programming heroes include John Carmack and Jeff Atwood, which all relates to my love of the computer game, Quake. Jeff and I were actually in a Quake clan together in my early days, as he helped me learn Visual Basic.
I consider myself a reasonably experienced web software developer. I do agree with Jeff’s recommended developer reading list, as I have purchased and read nearly every book. Lastly, computers are interesting machines, yet it is the people behind them and the impact they potentially produce that makes them really fascinating.
