today, i was reading the work of Joe Bork...a lot of his work... first i read his personal blog and then i went to his technical blog and both had something to offer to my interest,

first about the technical blog here he has piece talking abot "Why hobbyist programmers matter" well it is a well written blog, and i agree with him in toto. If the development tools didnt not allow for hobbyist programmers, i think a lot of school children wouldnt have this sort of interest in computers/programming.

I think its the sense of being able to create something with little or no resources that drives all of us at the very begining. And all of us start off as hobbyist programmers before making that serious plunge into software development...tools (development) should take that into consideration, also the tool development shops should find a way of supporting these hobbyist programmers,

It might not be such a bad idea for them to start groups particularly for this section of programmers and see what they come up with the people from the HR group can probably monitor these groups to pick the good ones...i think the HR bloggers from microsoft should give some serious thought to this approach.

Well this was on the technical side, on the personal side he wrote an excellent expose on his life with his parents..it was defn worth reading. You ahead and read it yourself.