About me
I could say I entered the world of computers at the age of 12 when my parents brought me my first personal computer: it was a Romanian model called CIP 03, with 64 KB RAM and a Basic-based language stored in ROM. Not a state of the art computer, but enough to capture my attention and change my future. When I was little I dreamed to become a football player; later on I wanted to become a doctor, but during high school I decided that I want to go technical and entered the University Politehnica of Timisoara. By that time my CIP 03 was covered in dust and I was playing Warcraft 2 on my Pentium I.
For five years I attended the courses of the University and during this time new horizons were opened to me. I graduated in 2003 with a diploma in computer science and I continued with the master studies and received a master diploma one year later, from the same University.
During my last summer vacation at the University I worked for Siemens VDO in Timisoara, but I didn't remain there after summer. Instead I joined a Canadian-based company called Star Automation that provides solutions for HVAC systems, where I developed Windows applications for the hardware systems designed and developed by the company. But sometimes paths go back and after three years I returned to Siemens, working in the same area of Windows desktop applications.
I don't recount every single programming or scripting language that I used to code in, but I can enumerate C, C++, Java, JavaScript, LISP, Prolog, Pascal, C#, VB.NET, MC++, C++/CLI, HTML, php, CSS. Of them all, C++ was always my favorite. However, that fact did not keep me away from the .NET framework and a special interest to the latest release of .NET3.0 framework.
I am an active member of several online developer communities. codeguru.com is the one that receives my most attention, and where I act as a moderator of the forums and reviewer, known as 'cilu'. You can find many articles of mine published on the site. More recent communities that I actively joined are MSDN forums, where I'm known under my real name, and ronua.ro where I'm one of the people handling the C++ forums and I'm also posting under the nickname 'cilu'. In April 2006 (and then again in 2007) I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (shortly MVP) award in the Visual C++ category for my on-line activities making me one of the 15 Romanian MVPs.
In July 2007 together with two friends and fellow MVPs for VC++ I have found CODEXPERT, a romanian community for C++ programmers. Our website (www.codexpert.ro) offers the community technical articles (and of course the possibility for everyone to publish articles there), a forum with many members that are experts in the field, and a wiki where members can contribute with content useful to the community. You don't have to be Romanian to join us, but all resources are in Romanian. Nor you have to be C++ oriented.
However, computers are not my only interest; other areas include physics, astronomy, cosmology, history of old civilization and reading. My favorite books include Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, Maitreyi by Mircea Eliade, Quo Vadis by Henrik Sienkiewicz and Tess d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. I enjoy listening especially pop-rock music and I'm a fan of Dinamo Bucharest and Manchester United.
