My name is Michael Mentele, I am an engineer and developer

-BS in Electrical Engineering
-CS coursework through MITx and UCx Berkley
-Books such as: The Pragmattic Programmer, Learn Ruby the Hard Way, Python for Dummies and many others!

-Useful: Programs are immensely powerful and solve real problems
-Good Practice: The act of programming and the way it forces you to think about problems in a general way is both challenging and rewarding--a useful practice by itself.
-Flexible: You can program from anywhere.
-Low Risk: Nothing blows up when you mess up (usually)
-Low Cost: All I need is a computer (though a second monitor is nice)
-Rare: Good programmers--like good thinkers--are rare, and rarity means value and impact.
-Community: I love the community, the people who program, because they are my people. It's also fun to do coding challenges with my brother and my nephew.