Paul Marrington
After an education in Physics, Maths and Electronics, I "fell" into programming. I was emplloyed to wire up data recorders and ended up writing a program to simulate polution from a power station in Fiji ... and never looked back. From the early days I had an interest in languages and user interfaces. I implemented FORTH and RATFOR systems and wrote what is now called DSLs for industry specific systems.
I did my apprenticeships in C (80s), C++ (90s), Java/J2EE (00s). I worked in GIS before was called GIS and developed my first single page applications long before the name was coined.
I have a strong preference for dynamic typing although I prefer strong typing as being more explcit. I believe in explicit over implicit even when it is not completely DRY. On the other hand I believe that scaffolding hides the meaning of code and makes it harder to maintain. In general I lean towards declarative programming styles - and functional programming supports this.