Mike Swieton

I’ve been writing software for more than ten years. Throughout my high school and university years I spent a lot of time working on personal and open source projects just for the adventure of trying something new. I started with Atomic in 2003 and have continued learning more in the years since.

My experience ranges from writing low-level concurrent programming and performance-critical code in C and C++ all the way up to very high level development in dynamic languages like Python, Perl, and Ruby. I’ve created software for businesses as diverse as health care, craft kits, and automotive manufacturing.

I love writing software but the best part of the job is when my customer comes back at the end of months of work and tells me “This tool earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue.” Creating new software is great but I always try to understand the business, because if I better understand the problem I can build a better tool.

There’s a big world outside of our office and when I’m there I spend time playing pool, putting hundreds of miles on my bicycle, and cooking. I spend a lot of time with sore legs, but at least I can cook a steak and a cheesecake when I get home.