Peter N. Wood

Who am I?

I began studying piano at the age of 7, and have been playing ever since. I went to Stony Brook University to study music for four years, and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts. As much as I enjoyed the experience, I couldn't imagine myself in a musical career without many more years of schooling, and I had no idea what that career would look like.

A few years later, I realized I had a passion for programming. I always had a love for logic puzzles, creativity, and mathematics, but I'd never made the connection between computer programming and creativity; I'd imagined programming as soulless number-crunching. I first tried my hand at writing code because I wanted to get involved with making video games. Inspired by some of the fun and creative stuff on Newgrounds, tried making animations and games in Flash using ActionScript ( back when Flash was owned by Macromedia, that's how long ago! ). I hadn't realized just how much I'd need to know to make it work properly. Despite reading several online tutorials and buying a heavy book on ActionScript, I dropped programming entirely.

Several years later, I came back to the idea of programming and started working from as low-level as I could rationalize: C++. I chose C++ for two reasons: it's one of the oldest coding languages that is still widely used and respected, and many of the most popular high-level languages are based in C ( like Ruby and Javascript ). I wanted to experience some of the history of the language without replicating it exactly, so I enslisted some open source libraries to help me along.

Working with C++ to make a game ignited my passion for programming, and when I knew I could set programming as a career goal, I leapt at the opportunity. I took the web development program offered by the now defunkt Dev Bootcamp: an intensive four-month course that saw me spending fifty hours per week honing my skills and learning new ones.

Now, I'm working as a web developer full-time, making small games in my spare time, and devoting a little time to music practice every day.