I was born and raised in Santa Cruz, CA growing up in the outskirts of the Soquel mountains. My first real job was working for Borland International (back in the mid 90s) supporting one of their flagship products. I quickly moved up from support to Research and Development and ended up working there for over a decade mostly on Borland Delphi, but I also worked on C++Builder, Kylix and Cylix in varying capacities. It was a humbling experience to be around such amazingly talented people and much of what I learned I can definitively say was learned from them.