About Phil Sherry

You’ve got a new person on the team and you need to know how to work with them. Here’s a guide to interfacing with this particular human, my working style, and how to get the best out of me.

In the beginning

I started messing about with computers back in the days of the ZX81 note 1 and VIC-20 note 2. Unlike my friends, I was more interested in what I could make them do than what games they played. Seeing movies like TRON note 3 and WarGames note 4 at the cinema was life-changing for me as a pre-teen. I knew I had to spend my life making computers talk to each other.

Career path

In time, the internet happened and as soon as I was online I started pulling apart websites to figure out how people built them. I didn’t start any fake global thermonuclear wars note 5, but I did go on to teach myself Perl and that’s almost as dangerous. My career path ended up looking something like this:

  1. Web designer.
  2. Web developer.
  3. Front-end developer.
  4. Accessibility specialist.
  5. 🦄 Unicorn.

Current

My main focus has been on front-end and accessibility for 20+ years now. I will generally educate any team that I’m a part of, and leave any project more accessible and more documented than when I found it.

I’m still trying to come to terms with TRON:ARES note 6, so please bear with me at this difficult time.


Footnotes

  1. The ZX81 is a home computer released by Sinclair Research in 1981 and was one of the first affordable computers available to the general public.
  2. The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer released by Commodore International in 1980.
  3. TRON is a 1982 American science fiction film written and directed by Steven Lisberger.
  4. WarGames is a 1983 American Cold War science fiction film about a young computer whiz kid who accidentally hacks into a U.S. military supercomputer.
  5. President Ronald Reagan’s interest in the film is credited with leading to the enactment 18 months later of NSDD-145, the first Presidential directive on computer security.
  6. Jared Leto Is The Worst Part Of Tron: Ares