Josh Partlow
Josh Partlow was introduced to computers in 1983 when he learned the rudiments of programming in Basic and 6502 assembly on an Apple IIe. He began programming seriously in high school with Pascal and IBM/DOS and ventured out into the pre-Internet world of dial-up BBS forums where a 1200 baud modem was a pretty neat thing.
In 1992, after attending Cal Tech and UCLA, Josh founded a technology consulting firm catering to small business. The company helped to transition small business from paper to computer processes using Microsoft Access and Visual Basic.
In 1997, Josh accepted a Programmer/Analyst position for the Center for Aids Prevention Studies at UCSF. During the next six years he built and maintained SQL databases for research studies, built data entry clients, wrote a number of programs to clean, analyze and manipulate datasets, and built ASP web applications for data access and reporting.
Late in 2000, Josh began studying mark-up languages, which led to an interest in XML. Frustrations with Microsoft-based ASP web application design led him to investigate Java, and the J2EE platform for web development. The wealth of open source databases, web and application servers available to Linux made it an ideal development and testing platform. Consequently Josh spent less and less time working in Windows and began making more and more use of open source software libraries and processes in his own coding. Soon he was running his own CVS repositories and busy fiddling with automated builds and test suites.
Frustrated by closed development environments like Visual Basic, Microsoft Access, and ASP where programming is complicated by the inability to see inside the black box of associated COM components, Josh turned increasingly to Open Source development and development models. The added transparency, the immediate access to the work of a global community of programmers, and the sheer wealth of tools and methods helped reinvigorate his career as a programmer.
Currently Josh spends his time tinkering with GNU/Linux, new languages and development methodologies. In his spare time, Josh writes, follows politics and continues his study of the martial art of Aikido.
Josh has received his LPIC-1 certification from the Linux Professional Institute.
- LPI ID: LPI000051226
- Verification Code: yyyau75nvg
