Sundersoft is a website about me, Ilya.

My interests are anything computer-related (programming, video games, computer maintenance, etc), drawing, and reading books or online content. I prefer to create, and this website exists to be a repository for things I've made.

I'm 16 years old and was born in Russia, but moved to the US when I was 4. I have never been social, and instead spent my time developing skills. While in the US, I took an interest in video games, especially the Might and Magic series. Before then, I had wanted to be an electrical engineer, but decided to become a programmer after my father told me that games like Might and Magic were made by programmers and not electrical engineers, and offered to teach me about programming.

I was around 7 years old when I first took up programming, using whatever languages and tools I could get my hands on, such as Delphi. Being too young to understand and not having much instruction, I floundered. At age 11, I attended a programming camp which was a waste of time in itself but gave me exposure to other programming languages, namely C++ and DarkBASIC. The latter allowed me to get the hang of programming and actually develop something useful, but it's a terrible language and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. At age 12, I decided to move on to the PHP langauge and then C++, which I've been using since. The book "The C++ Programming Language" was influential and caused me to change my style with the language, but I read it late at age 15.

In contrast, my art background comes almost completely from school. I always chose an art elective whenever one was offered, and also drew in other classes instead of listening to the teacher. Art class is starting to creep into my free time since I never rush through a drawing, implying that I end up having to finish it at home. Hopefully I'll get around to drawing more personal projects.

My future would probably center around programming. I'm pretty good at it, and there are many things wrong with the current state of programming. For example, development of narrowly-defined, small, interoperable libraries with very small interfaces and liberal licensing should be encouraged. This will encourage code reuse