About

My name is Benjamin Hysell, and I love to program and write about programming, project management, and people management.  I acquired my love of programming from my father, a veterinarian, who used IBM’s first PC and BASIC to create a suite of applications to run his animal hospital.

When the PCjr was released, I received my first programming book from my father, and I was hooked.  BASIC Fun with Graphics the IBM/PC Way and I spent quite a few hours together.  By the time I took my first structured programming class in sixth grade I knew I wanted to be involved with computers and programming when I “grew up.”

Throughout high school and college my father and I worked on several projects together, I would bring home new programming techniques and architectures, and he would teach me the value of optimizing code to work within systems with limited resources like RAM and hard drive space.

I have since touched many different programming languages, from Pascal, C++, Prolog, and lately the .NET languages and Java.  After college my focus has turned to seeking out tools and techniques that allow me to be more productive, and ensure the code I create is robust and testable.  I have since added to my programming arsenal test-driven development, agile project management, object mocking, personas, and continue to read and evaluate new programming techniques on a daily basis.

I am a Senior Systems Engineer for Viewpoint Systems, translation: I am an active developer with management responsibilities.

Viewpoint Systems is a consulting company that specializes in specifying and building test and measurement systems with our clients.  I have had the opportunity to design and implement many different complex systems using C#, ASP.NET, and National Instruments graphical programming language LabVIEW.

In my free time love playing ice hockey (I’ve been actively playing since I was old enough to walk), skiing, weight training, jogging, yoga, meditating, and hiking with my wife and our German Shepherd.

A few links that will give a little insight into who I am and how I work can be found within my blog:

http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/01/why-write-a-technical-blog/http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/02/the-technical-interview/http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/03/very-strong-opinions-very-weakly-held/http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/05/your-baby-is-ugly/http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/05/how-valuable-are-yearly-reviews/http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/06/understanding-the-wheel/http://benjaminhysell.com/archive/2009/07/how-would-you-motivate-howard-stern/

Contact Me [email protected] @benhysell