I’m Ty Ridings. I live in the suburbs of Chicago, where I build software to make people's lives easier.

Building software is one of my favorite things to do, and my decision to pursue it as a career has given me some of the best opportunities of my life. I really enjoy the challenge of solving a problem and the feeling you get once you've gotten over the hurdle. In my mind, it's one of the most humbling, yet rewarding experiences you can have.

I first got into software engineering when I was in college and I was hooked immediately. While I considered myself to be a great student in other subjects, building software was a completely different animal. It forced me to adapt how I thought about problems, and to earn the progress of solving them by asking the right questions and doing the legwork to figure things out when I was stuck. In many ways, building software taught me how to think and the learnings I've taken from doing it have been something that's helped me tremendously in other areas of my life.

When I'm not building applications, you can probably find me on my boat. I absolutely love being out on the water. It's kind of funny because while software requires a more measured approach to things, boats are quite the opposite. Nobody who thinks rationally about their money buys a boat (for recreational use). But life is short, and some of the biggest smiles I've ever cracked were on my pontoon. To me, there's no better way to spend your day than taking a cruise with your family, or anchoring in with friends while our kids swim around us. I can have a bad day, but the moment I start my boat is the end of that bad day.