I recently got a comment from a
reader thanking
me for my blog content (which was nice) and then tweaking me because he couldn't
find my name until he started reading the comments. Grrr... What's wrong man? Can't
you see it there in the fine print of the copyright text at the very bottom of the
sidebar?
OK, maybe that's not so obvious, and I suppose that my readership has grown a little
beyond my immediate friends and colleagues. For those of you who are interested,
here is the obligatory bio page.
On April 10, 1975, I was born
Dustin Russell Campbell in Findlay, Ohio and
spent my early years on a steady diet of Star Wars and text adventure games. Fortunately,
my father always had a deep interest in computers so there was always some sort
of machine around the house. In fact, we owned one of the first
TRS-80 Model I machines in the
city. MY first computer was a
Commodore VIC-20 (eventually
graduating to a
Commodore 64)
on which I became interested in programming (in
BASIC of course!). We purcharsed
our first
PC in 1986-87,
and I immediately fell in love.
Junior high and high school were turbulant times for me. In 1987, for the same reasons
that most boys do (chicks and dough), I took up guitar. To my mother's shame, I
gravitated towards hard rock and heavy metal. I was always that kid in the back
of the honors classes with long hair and a
Metallica T-shirt. You know
the one. (I have pictures, but I'm not showing.) However, it wasn't always black T-shirts and loud guitars. I also played the
viola from fourth grade all the
way into college. So, even throughout a period of heavy teenage angst, I found enjoyment
in many other styles of music (e.g. classical, jazz, etc.).
After high school, I had two choices of career to pursue in college: computer science
or music. At the time, music was more attractive (chicks and dough, remember?),
so I entered
Bowling Green State University in
the Fall of 1993 as a Guitar Performance major with a jazz emphasis. That's right
dear readers, I went to college for
jazz guitar and studied with the masterful
Chris Buzzelli. It might surprise some
of you to learn that, at BGSU, this is one of the hardest music degrees to get.
In fact, out of the 16 guitarists that started with me, I was the only one to earn the degree.
Throughout college, I made ends meet by doing various odd jobs (programming, support,
whatever...) for my father's fledgling software firm. He eventually converted me
from
Visual Basic 6 to
Borland Delphi, with which
I learned proper
object-oriented
programming skills.
In August of 1998, I finally graduated with my Bachelor's in Guitar Performance
and had no idea what I wanted to do. Programming was certainly a draw, but I wasn't
particularly interested in joining the
Geek Squad just yet. So, I
re-enrolled at BGSU as a graduate student in Guitar Performance. To help pay my
way, I took a graduate assistantship as the
College of Musical Arts' web developer.
I stayed in school for one more year and then dropped out because my interests had shifted. I just didn't have the same passion for music that I had for computers
and technology. (It turned out that "chicks and dough" was a myth.)
After dropping out, I stayed on as the web developer and continued programming for
my father. It wasn't glorious, but it was fun and I earned a reasonable living.
Eventually, I started using CodeRush for Delphi and developed a friendship with
its creator,
Mark Miller. In the Spring of
2003, Mark contacted me and asked if I had been working in
C# yet. He further elaborated
that he was working on a super-secret project and needed me to join him in Las Vegas
for a couple of weeks. At this time, I had only been married for a few months, but
my trophy wife was gracious and told me to go. When I arrived in Vegas, Mark informed
me that
Developer Express was aquiring
his
company and all of his products,
including CodeRush. We would be working on the new
CodeRush
for Visual Studio. I continued on the product as an independent contractor throughout
the summer and joined Developer Express as a full-time employee in September of
2003.
Currently, I am the Lead Developer for the IDE Tools division at Developer Express.
My responsibilities include much of the low-level plumbing for the
DXCore,
CodeRush
and
Refactor!
products. I am passionate about becoming a better developer and spend a great deal
of my free time learning new technologies. In addition, I enjoy speaking on a variety
topics whenever I can get anyone to sit still long enough. For my contributions
to the C# community, I was awarded with
Microsoft MVP status in April of 2007.
There's more to come—of that I'm certain.