As Anupam already announced, I will be taking over as editor of Better Programming as of Monday, September 11.

I wanted to share a few words on who I am, and how this came about.

Who am I?

I have been a software engineer for the past 8–9 years, but I have always had a strong interest in the non-technical aspects of life.

I moved from Romania to the United States at 14, with a very strong math background. So it just kind of made sense that I love and study computers — which I did, graduating from Dartmouth College with a double majorin Computer Science and Psychology.

Programming at the time was not ideal for me — C++ compilers, working in basement labs on DEC Alpha or SGI UNIX workstations. So I ended up teaching high school math instead of getting a tech job right out of college, and I ended up doing a few other things in life — some of them coaching-related.

Ten years ago, though, I learned about web development, Agile and Ruby: three factors of what seemed like a much better world for programmers.

First of all, web development is much easier than what I studied in my CS major.

There, I studied topics like algorithms, operating systems, networking, data structures and artificial intelligence — all important and wonderful, but not necessarily what I wanted to do.

So there was a niche for me to come back to programming, and be more of a software writer than an engineer, like David Heinemeier Hanson puts it.

Second, Agile development is a really humanistic approach.

Define the work, then take what is reasonable. Measure velocity? Perhaps, but don’t hold yourself and the team accountable to unreasonable deadlines. Pair program. Emphasize testing so you can feel safe.

Agile is really the magic that gives me hope that I can be involved with programming for the rest of my life.

Finally, I fell in love with Ruby on Rails.

Ruby is a language expressly created for developer happiness, with its beautiful syntax and plentiful helper methods. Rails is also a pleasure to work with, with its convention over configuration approach (which is also an agile principle).

How do I fit with Better Programming?

Well, I am only here because programming was made better over the past couple of decades. I feel invested in the industry, and specifically on how we can improve the lives of developers like myself. I even have ideas for a community (ironically) named PHP: the Programmer Happiness Project.

I mostly want to write code, but… When the opportunity came to be part of BP and be intimately involved in discussions such as what factors make programming better and how do we move towards that ideal… I could not resist the temptation.

I am excited to bring my passion and discernment to the cause.

I look forward to meeting new friends who hold the same values.

I am the new editor of Better Programming was originally published in Better Programming on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.