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Anyone that has developed software for someone else will easily agree that instructions are never clear – and if they are clear, they are never adequate. That “someone else” is a customer, and as in business – “the customer is always right”. As developers, though, we must find how to play back what we understood the customer to be saying. The one way to parrot back is using the prototype. This is one way by which stakeholders could tell if they were understood while it gives them a chance to clarify their instructions. XCode and Android studio are wired to create a type of an app by without updating the boiler plate code. It makes it easy to drop controls on it and create a mannequin – I mean a prototype. It is possible to create some navigation, and menu bars without much code. The mannequin will show how it will all fit together.

I do not like computers. I really don’t.

Being an IT professional, this might surprise many. I believe computers are nothing more than work tools that are supposed to enhance our productivity. We should be able to make computers work for us and not the other way around. This is not always the case. We have heard of having been more glued and tethered to technology, such that we were freer when there was less technology. This should not be the case. Technology is intended to add to our freedom and create greater flexibility.

That said, I like what computers do and what they can do. I love to explore technology and what it is capable of doing not only to support the business but our very lives. During the Covid19 mandated lockdown, with people working remotely and school classes running online, we appear to need computers for our very lives. We cannot live and work without them.

My liking for what computers can do, and not a love for computers, has led me to develop deep interests in telling computers what to do. And since computers run on software, I found myself becoming a software developer. My journey as a software developer has been guided by my interpretation of what information systems are – a science that guides acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information. Computers can fall well on that food chain as they guide how we get information in whatever format it is, store it in database systems, retrieve and display it, and guide the use of it to promote life and business.

I started off in telecommunications in Kenya in the early ’90s working on Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) maintaining switches. At the turn of the century, I took up a job as a cellular network switching engineer where I was and still is, fascinated by how cell phone networks carry voice and data.

Coming to college in America I did my undergraduate in Computer Information Systems and a masters degree in Management Information Systems. That led me to the pursuit of a PhD in Information Systems and Technology at Claremont Graduate University. While working on these degrees I have held software development jobs with an emphasis on database development.