7deeds

My name is Petros Amiridis and I program since I was 11 years old. I am a professional programmer since 1998. Lets take it from the beginning.

In 1985, my father – a visionary doctor – decides to buy me my first computer, after a visit to the International Fair of Thessaloniki. It was an Amstrad CPC 6128 with a green monitor and a disk drive. After spending the first period playing games, with a time constraint of 1 hour per day, imposed by my father, a conversation I have with an English schoolmate makes me want to explore the inner workings of the computer.

When I saw him write a simple Basic program in a blank piece of paper in a matter of seconds, something clicked inside me and that was a moment I will never forget as long as I live. It was the moment I decided what I want to do for the rest of my life (no, it’s not writing programs in Basic on a piece of paper). After that, I moved on to owning two Amiga computers and my first PC when I started in City College.

In 1995, I fulfill my military obligations and I start my Bachelor in Computer Science in City College which is an affiliated institution of the University of Sheffield.

In 1998 I graduate with a Class 1 B.Sc. and I finish an extraordinary thesis which is published at the 7th Hellenic Conference of Informatics in Ioannina. I start looking for a job during the summer of the same year.

I start working for a small company with hand-held devices; I work for three months and I leave them without a prior notice because the code I was asked to maintain was a mess. Young and inexperienced I just don’t show up for work and announce my resignation over the phone to my boss. Some said to me that was a mistake, but until now I haven’t regretted it.

I get a job right away in September 1998 with Logismos, the company where I have spent almost 8 years of my life. While I worked for Logismos I learned a lot, I tried to give my best, I lost my father – the one responsible for making me love this profession -, I got married and I had my lovely daughter born.

In May 2006, I decided to quit from Logismos and begin working as a freelancer. In this blog, among other things, you will learn about my experiences during this adventure.

In 2007, as a freelancer, I create my first web application for a customer using Ruby on Rails. I heard about Ruby on Rails from a friend of mine and I decided to use it as it won me over immediately. I have never regretted it since.

In September 2007, I start working with ITS S.A., helping them organize their development department from scratch. I created the team there and I established the process we follow and the tools we use. The company provides services for the retail market and develops applications in .NET for Windows Mobile. I never omit thanking ITS management for agreeing on letting the whole team start working remotely from home.

In 2009, I started volunteering in Builders, a RailsBridge project.

These days, I don’t do any freelance work anymore. I mainly work with ITS and at the same time I am always thinking ideas for creating web startups. The ideas are revolving mainly around the SaaS model.