Sully Syed
Software Developer
In a nutshell, I’m a software developer for a large media company located in Toronto, Canada. When I’m not planning and writing software, I dabble in amateur photography, play video games and use this blog to keep track of interesting reading material I come across every day.
I was born in Toronto and have always lived here, experiencing life in most of the city’s boroughs at one time or another (East York, North York, Scarborough and Mississauga). Right now I occupy a second-floor condo in downtown Toronto that’s a fifteen minute walk from the Eaton Centre.
I attended high school at Scarborough’s Woburn Collegiate Institute and there was fortunate enough to meet and learn from an exceptional set of instructors and peers. I particularly credit the gifted level computer science classes I took in my later years there for providing me an enormous head start with the concepts and technologies I’d otherwise have encountered for the first time at the university level.
My post-secondary education was completed at Ryerson University, where I obtained a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. The track system offered at Ryerson again provided a significant early boost to my career, allowing me to concentrate on building software engineering and project management skills that were immediately transferable to real-world projects.
My professional experience in software development began with Perl/PHP, Apache and MySQL in 2001 as a contractor to a privately held marketing firm. After graduation in 2005 I began to work in a corporate setting, adding Java, Python, the .NET languages (VB.NET, C#) and Ruby on Rails in the years that followed. While I hold expert-level qualifications in each of these languages, my career path is that of a generalist, as I endeavour to be able to step into any development role and make immediate contributions.
Leisurely Pursuits
Aside from my regular work, I dabble in digital photography. I shoot with a Canon EOS 40D, paired primarily with a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 lens, a Canon 70-210mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom and Canon 50mm f/1.8 normal lens. The best the photos taken with my gear get uploaded onto my Flickr account.
I write a little bit – more accurately, I see things written by other people that I think is worth remembering and repeating, so I re-paste them to my blog. The original work I do produce usually consists of concert reviews posted on The Panic Manual.
I also have an Xbox Live subscription under the gamer tag yllus if you ever want to catch a game with me.
Contact Information
To contact me, e-mail me at sully@yllus.com. I’m also on Twitter as sullysyed.
