My name is Drew Wibbenmeyer and I'm a primarily self-taught developer. I'm from Missouri in the USA. My primary language is C++, and I focus on modern versions of C++.
NOTE: This README is still a work-in-progress!
💻 Languages & Technologies | 💻 Primary Languages & Technologies | 💻 Secondary Languages & Technologies | 📈 GitHub Stats | 📧 Social Media | 🚶♂️ My Programming Journey | 👍 My Programming Interests | 🎨 My Other Interests
I can't remember the specific order of events of my earlier experiences with programming, but I've been tinkering with programming since early in highschool. One of my first programming experiences was with TI-BASIC on a TI-84+ Silver Edition. I didn't do too much with it, but I still ran into severe limitations of what it was able to do. So, I tried learning how to write Z80 Assembly programs for it. Let's just say I was way over my head at that point.
My first experience with specifically computer programming was with DarkBASIC, a "gaming-oriented" dialect of BASIC. I toyed around with that until I ran across the need for pointers or references, except I didn't know what those were at the time.
My first programming class was in junior year (11th grade) of highschool. In it we mostly learned VisualBASIC 6 but we touched a bit on HTML as well. My final project was a game, a version of Snake specifically, unfortunately I was a little too ambitious with what I was trying to do. I think I had to turn it in with a major bug still, but it was still a great learning opportunity.
Jump ahead to freshmen year of college, there I began learning C++ (I snuck in a little bit of studying on my own shortly before I started). I learned more about basic data structures and algorithms. Unfortunately, I had to drop out after about a semester and a half.
So, now I've spent the last many years since learning on my own. I've made a thousand little programs most of which only got worked on for a day or two. And the overwhelming majority of those never made it online, because it took me embarrassingly long to learn about version control systems. I've also added more languages to my repertoire. There are a few skills I know that I've missed out learning by not being in school, mainly more advanced algorithms and data structures, project organization, and team skills. Probably something I can learn, it just hasn't been a priority while I haven't been working professionally.
So, it might be obvious from my skill badges, but my primary interests lie in game development. I also have an interest in both using and creating fantasy consoles. And when creating fantasy consoles (these have never been released) I've tried both high-level similar to popular ones (ie. PICO-8 and TIC-80), and lower-level where I design "fantasy hardware" (ie. CPUs, GPUs, video devices, etc.) and put them together.
I would also like to learn about artifical intelligence programming and robotics someday. Additionally, I would like to learn more about web-based programming. I've tried, but the thought-process is quite a bit different than what I'm used to. I would need a significant amount of time to get comfortable with it, as well.
First of all, related to game development, occasionally I enjoy making some pixel art and trying my hand at making digital music. Also, when I'm not programming I'm usually playing games (I just recently built my first gaming PC). I'm also considering starting a Twitch channel where I'd do a mix of playing games and programming/other game development tasks.