Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

08 Sep 2006, 13:25 p.m.

Work Experience

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2006 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

A story about fast food reminds me how lucky I am that I've never worked that kind of retail.

A few friends of mine who have really impressive resumes up online: web designer Kristofer Straub, web developer Brendan Adkins (newly revamped portfolio!), developer Kevin Maples, and developer Leonard Richardson.

For one thing, this reminds me that I should put up a resume. In a little over two years I'll have some choices to make and I should start laying a good foundation. Also, Leonard's resume reminds me of his impressive software portfolio.

It used to be that I could talk with new acquaintances about Leonard and make geeks' jaws drop. "You know the Segfault.org guy?" they'd say, or: "You're dating the guy who wrote robotfindskitten!" And then I'd bask. But that happens less often these days.

Then, today, I was shooting the breeze with Ben here at work, in a discussion that touched on "The REPL in .NET". I mentioned that frustration with cleaning up HTML and XML for and with parsers drove Leonard to create Beautiful Soup. Ben said, "Leonard wrote Beautiful Soup?!" And I got to bask again.

Anyway, I marvel at all the software Leonard has written. What a productive husband I married! Geeks might find lots of useful stuff in there (e.g., The Bayes Motel), and nongeeks will enjoy The Eater of Meaning.