Chris Clark

You have found Chris Clark‘s Web Site. I am Chris Clark, and I have just turn 38  and it’s 2009 as I write this.

You will find that Iam a very devoted Christian, my Church of choice is Salem United Methodist Church, where regularly you can find me teaching Sunday School on Sunday mornings to a fine group of 30+ to infinity men and women.

Having been married now for 15 years to my best friend, with whom I share two wonderful children ages 11 and 7.

Starting as a facinated kid who loved to play with computers. I turned a hobby and passion into a living. Programming computers now for about 26 years, since I was 12.

Having started writing simple programs in in interpreted BASIC on the Timex Sinclair 1000 back in 1983.  I move quickly from BASIC on to QuickBasic where I wrote several programs that used random access files for databases.

Finding a flare for database development and having created something that gave me a sense of accomplishment. It was soon that I found my love for DBase in the Mid 1980s. I programmed lots of DBase programs for friends and family, some for money, some for fun. Wrote many xBase code generators that were designed to turn out applications that were full featured with very little time.

I found the xBase language to be functional, fast enough and gratifying. However, I always wanted a little more and sought out native compilers for xBase programs such as Quicksilver and Clipper.

I wrote my first programs in DBase circa 1992 in Charlotte, NC. I added Clipper and FoxPro to my toolbox and became a pretty decent Clipper developer. Over the years, I wrote lots of Dbase/Clipper/Foxpro programs, but that eventually started to fade out. I was very fortunate to have absorbed dBase when I did and turn it into a computer career. I am very fortunate for the chance that Summit Computer Services took on me when they offered a young kid with no college education and job programming dBase programs for corporate America.

VB and SQL Server became the new thing and I dived right into in the early versions right when VB came out and SQL Server had been Sybase. I did pretty well in Visual Basic and then the web hit.

I spent lots of time tearing apart IIS, VB, Sockets and Internet Protocols to see how it all worked. I have been known to tinker from time to time.

I moved into the Java Applet space, then into Java and EJBs. For a couple years I did both Java and ASP/VB/COM. Looking back that seems so long ago.

My experience with VB/SQL/ASP/IIS allowed me to get my job in Microsoft technology, where I was able to start working with .NET in the early Betas.

I left that company for 2 years to become CTO of a mobile company. There I developed in .NET on the server and Java on the Blackberry and Motorola devices.

I have specialized in Mobile device development for about the last 7 years now. Windows Mobile , Blackberry J2ME and iPhone.

I am currently Director of Mobile Solutions, for a large Microsoft focused consultancy.

My current project is for a large oil field services company developing an application that runs on occasionally connected laptops.