Darren Irvine

Ah me. I'd originally signed my (few) comments and pages with the RealName that I use everywhere on the net, and which almost everyone in RealLife knows me as, which is darsy (I don't normally bother with a "last name", but when it's essential it's "X"). But then I discovered that not only does "DarsyX" not make the exponents of RealNamesPlease happy, but it isn't even a well-formed WikiName. So, here I am, using the name that only my employers and the tax man know me by.

So, what am I doing here? On a quest for a paradigm of self-justification. Or rather, trying to work out what the hell I'm doing in general.

I come from a (6502) machine-code hacking background on the old Acorn Atom home computer, via some YearsInTheWilderness coding modules for accountancy/distrubution software systems, in DiBol, DCL, Recital and some - Ged help me - Vax Basic. In those days (early to mid 90s), we went through so many CASE tools and more "New! Improved!" methodologies than I could have shaken a stick at at the time. I decided enough was enough and got out of "traditional" programming (though by the end I was JustaSystemsAnalyst? and doing very little actually programming), and moved countries (Northern Ireland -> England) and became (briefly) a technical author.

For the last 5 years or so, I've basically been JustaWebMonkey?, working chiefly in a consultant/contractor type of role for my own company, putting together interactive web sites of various size and hue, mostly using AllaireColdFusion. I do pre-sales support, application design, coding, mentoring, lots of testing, and I even quite like documentation (I have a side-line as an Internet journalist and tutorial-writer).

So, back to why I'm here - well, I'm definitely from the LightweightMethodology school of RAD - but I don't use a formal methodology - just one that consists of tried and tested techniques that I've formulated over the years. Why I'm here is to find out which bits of what I'm doing are right, and which need sorting out.

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