David Simner

I started playing with computers when I stuffed sweets into my parents' floppy disk drive when I was 5. They weren't happy. When I was 10, I progressed onto something much more fun: coding!

After a brief stint pretending to be an academic, I returned to what I love. For the past 5 years I've been a software developer at Red Gate.

There have been lots of mistakes and learning along the way, but that’s what makes it fun: I now know that “Minimally Viable” includes writing the clean-up code, because otherwise you’ll spend nearly a grand on Amazon S3 before anybody notices; luckily my boss was forgiving.

In my spare time I try to convince my train-obsessed friends to give up their obsession, and despite claiming not to be able to cook, I “product manage” my partner's Fair Trade Cook Book website.

Sessions

• OWIN, Katana and ASP.NET vNext: eliminating the pain of IIS