Andrew Gauger - Origins

07 Mar 2016 . launch . Comments #yetanother

Andrew Gauger started writing code in 1993, at age 9. While his family gathered for movies, he poured over code. By 1996, Andrew launched his first website, Maximus Programming Pavilion, named after his best friend, a stuffed dog. The site taught Qbasic and HTML. That was the last site Andrew designed that used framesets.

In 1999, during freshman keyboarding class, Andrew was caught changing the physics of exploding bananas in the Qbasic game Gorillas included with DOS. The teacher made an ultimatium, show the staff how he broke the secure system or face punishment. Andrew was happy to show how he did it, using a word processor he edited the menu configuration file, creating an entry for a shell prompt. The teacher was not interested to learn how to change the dynamics of the game, however.

That encounter led to Andrew’s first job, the webmaster at the Chamber of Commerce, at 15 years old. Before having the opportunity to interview with the Chamber Director, however, Andrew received a volunteer of the year award for building the TOBAC (Teens on Battle Against Cigarettes and Chew) website from the very same man. The interview was merely formality.

During the remaining years of high school, Andrew founded the Computer Club, consulted with 4 businesses, and owned a business. Before graduating high school, he had worked with a dozen langauges. Fast forward 15 years, Andrew has used 50 languages to solve hundreds of projects.

Andrew does speaking engagements at local development meetups. He writes articles, blogs, commentaries, and an upcoming novel on software. Andrew contributes to open source church management software, and develops and designs Praybook.

If you are interested in having Andrew work on a website for you, spend some time reading the FAQ.