Gabe Sumner

I am a web application programmer who utterly despises technology.  As soon as humanly possible I intend to buy several acres of farmland, get some horses, several dogs and take up banjo playing.

I'm only partially joking.  In truth, I'm glued to the Internet almost all day.  I love learning & seeing the free & raw exchange of ideas.  In this capacity, the Internet is the greatest invention the world has ever seen.  (Thanks Al Gore!)  I hope the Internet never gets "toned down".  I want people to be able to say horribly offensive things.  In my view, the best way to extinguish ignorance is not to hide it, but rather to let it see the light of day and expose itself for what it is.  The Internet reflects the full spectrum of human thought, from ugly to beautiful, ignorant to genius.

Regarding web application programming, I love the process of creation.  For me, there is something very compelling about creating efficient, effective, manageable and clean solutions.  Overall, I love my job.

However, I'm not joking about my dislike of technology.  In my view, technology exists to make our lives easier.  Period.  When I say "our lives" I mean both "users" and "programmers".  I mean everyone!  Anyone who interacts with technology should be served by technology, not the other way around.  There are a great number of programmers who pride themselves on their ability to contort their thinking and solutions to serve a computer.  I can put myself in this frame of mind when doing performance tuning, however I try to make my solutions human-centric.  What matters to me is that the application lets users accomplish their goal while still being easily manageable by programmers.

After reading all of this, you might understand why I am a fan of Object Relational Mappers, frameworks, Ruby on Rails, Django, ASP.NET, DRY principals, etc, etc.  Many of these projects started with a belief that the programmer's time & happiness is important.  They then sought to make everything as simple as possible.  Less code = less maintenance problems.

I currently work for a very large real estate company.  I blog and frequently have several side projects cooking at any given time.  If you have an interesting project or opportunity, feel free to contact me.