Hello and welcome to CoreyOgburn.com! If you don't already know, I'm Corey Ogburn and I'll be filling your screen with my experiences, techniques and observations about development. Ranging from simple first-timer interactions with code to advanced architectures and implementations, you'll hopefully be able to learn from my failures as well as my successes. If you're going to be coming back to this site, then you might as well find out who I am and why I'm worth reading:

My interest in programming began when I was about 12. I remember seeing a website on a commercial and I began wondering about who created that website. So I booted up AOL and typed into Yahoo "How to create a website" and I was taken to a very basic, yellow page that started describing fundamentals about HTML tags. At the bottom, it talked about how Javascript was available for use in websites, but the author of that page did not know enough to begin writing any examples and offered a link to a different site for that. As soon as I clicked that link, I was hooked. Not necessarily hooked to web development, but programming in general. Something about being able to type in notepad and turning it into images and controls and running code was just exciting. I tinkered with HTML, Javascript, and eventually CSS before taking my first real programming class my freshman year of high school. Then I was introduced to VB6. I began reading ahead in the book and soaking up every line of code I could learn. "Obsessed" doesn't carry the weight for the thirst I had to learn what I could do.

Two years later during my Junior year of High School, I began attending a community college during the afternoon taking their Information Technology course and started learning about networks and protocols. Half way through my first year there, my teacher announced how next year a Programming/Software Development class would be available and, if we were interested in joining that class, we could begin working the curriculum early. I took him up on that and as much as I enjoyed VB6, when I dipped my toe into Java, it solidified development as what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. File I/O, ports, sorting, layout design, I was amazed by it all and I needed to learn more. Even though I was only a half day high school student, I was keeping up with the full time students (it was a learn at your own pace environment). That second year at the community college, I went to a Business Professionals of America (BPA) state competition and placed second (of how many, I don't remember but more than two I assure you). We were told that if two people had the same score for the program they turn in, whoever turned it in first would receive a better placement, so I rushed through and left no comments. As small as that seems, I believe that's why I placed second. The community college had a rule that if you place first in a state competition, then the school pays for you to go to nationals, if you get second, they have a fundraiser to pay for the trip. After a quick bake sale and carwash, I soon found myself in New York City for a week representing my school in Java Programming. It was surreal and mind-numbingly incredible to know that I earned my way there. I took note of the fact I didn't leave comments in the state competition and was calmer and more collected during the actual competition. I felt confident, but in the room of 70 or 80 competitors all placed well in their respective states, it's hard to be absolutely sure of success. On stage being called as one of the top ten made my heart race, but being called as first place was dizzying and overwhelming. It was a lot of hard work getting there, although by all means it was worth it. If you ever get the chance to enter a competition like this, I highly suggest at least trying, because you just never know.

Since then, I've worked here and there developing for places during Summer. First for an up and coming financial services company doing ASP.Net web services and custom development, followed quickly by a custom website development firm where I was introduced to PHP. This Summer, I'm interning for an agricultural analysis outfit who is leading the way in standardizing all the data involved in agriculture.

As of this post, I'm 21 and I know I still have a lot to learn in the industry of Software Development. This Fall, I'll be starting my Senior year in college majoring in Computer Science. I have my own personal projects that I'm sure I'll post more about in the coming days. My preferred language is C#, but I have experience in Assembly, Perl, SQL, VB.Net, and C++ in addition to the those mentioned earlier. I'm an avid XKCD reader and I enjoy long walks on the beach... I'm pretty sure that covers everything. As I continue writing posts, I'm sure I'll fill you in on anything about myself I forgot so please check back often to see what pearls I have to talk about. I plan to keep this blog updated fairly recently. It's my first time writing a blog, unless you count Twitter (coreyog).