Yogi is one of the bright young minds writing the code responsible for the semantic web magic that is headup. At the tender age of 24 this cynical yet friendly young man already has over 14 years of coding under his belt. One of Yogi’s responsibilities is implementing headup on Silverlight, and that’s exactly why I thought he’d be the best person to talk to about it.
A programmer is born
Me: So Yogi how come you’re smart?
Yogi: My dad is a professor of Microbiology. He was working on his Ph.D. during my formative years and used to keep his cultures in the fridge right next to the yogurts. I must have mistakenly imbibed them at least a dozen times.
Me: That explains a lot, but it doesn’t explain how you started programming so early on.
Yogi: I have my elder brother to thank for that one. He’s 3 years older than me and we spent lots of time together while we were growing up. Some of that time was when he was supposed to be doing his computer science homework for school. It was pretty basic stuff in Pascal but I was completely captivated by it. My brother, gentle soul that he is, let me read his assignments, showed me the ropes, and let me do his homework for him. I loved every minute of it.
Me: What kind of programs does a kid of 14 write?
Yogi: I wrote calculators to do my math homework for me and my own versions of games like Snake and Space Invaders which I’d share with my friends. The best part of the whole thing was that I got to write my own cheats into the games. I remember my friends going crazy trying to figure them out.
Me: Where did you learn all this stuff?
Yogi: My mom has a Master’s degree in Computer Science and she kept her university books lying around the house. I read those, technical documentation, pretty much anything I could lay my hands on. This was before I had access to the Web, and probably too early in the web’s existence for it to have had anything worthwhile for me anyway.
Me: And then what?
Yogi: My math cheat programs helped me ace my school courses and I was encouraged by my math teacher to enroll into the University early. I started taking Computer Science courses and the rest is history.
Yogi stumbles into headup
Me: So how come you work here?
Yogi: It’s actually a mistake. I didn’t plan on working for headup. At the time it happened I didn’t plan on working at all – it was more a ‘Chillaxin’ kind of period for me.
Me: What happened?
Yogi: A friend pressed me to come and visit him here and introduced me to Tal (Tal Muskal our CTO). We got caught up in a conversation and the next thing I knew I was sitting in front of a keyboard fiddling with Silverlight.
A programmers insight into Silverlight
Me: About that, there’s been a lot of buzz around our choice of Silverlight, perhaps you could elaborate on it a little.
Yogi: Simply put Silverlight is a programmers dream come true. It’s an environment that allows developers to write C# code to create cross-browser cross-platform applications that integrate XAML based UI.
Me: Whoa whiz kid! Yo no hablo geek.
Yogi: Allow me to translate – Silverlight lets programmers bring together all the BEST tools available for each of the tasks involved in developing an application.
Me: Ok that much I understood, do you want to elaborate?
Yogi: Here goes. C# (pronounced C sharp) is a a simple, modern, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that was developed for use in developing software components that can take advantage of distributed environments. It’s well liked by programmers and allows for quick development of powerful applications.
Me: One down two to go. What is XAML?
Yogi: XAML (pronounced Zammel) is a markup language specifically designed to define user interface elements. It’s a very powerful tool for creating intuitive and structured interfaces.
Me: Cool. I guess UI is User Interface?
Yogi: You’re catching on. We’ll have you speaking geek in no time.
Me: I still don’t understand what all this has to do with Silverlight?
Yogi: Both C# and XAML are Microsoft products. Only Microsoft could create the platform that would unite them. Silverlight is that platform. It brings together the best that these powerful tools have to offer, and what’s more, it includes a design framework similar to the one offered by Adobe Flash that let’s you case the whole thing with stunning graphics.
Me: Sounds like a programmers dream come true.
Yogi: I told you you’re catching on…
Great post! and a very funny conversation
[...] go to Yogi for writing this [...]