I am a semi-independent coder that pursues programming as both a hobby (but not as an art) and career. I have spent several years studying programming language structure and consider myself comfortable with most of the traditional languages (C-based, Perl-based, Python, Fortran?)

I usually take the mental approach to programming as opposed to trial and error. I've found that one of the best ways to learn is to try to teach what it is you already know. This with my desire to help everyone understand the behavior of code and its eccentricities (or lack thereof) makes StackOverflow the ideal place for me to help advance the skills of programmers and reach new heights in software.

To best help people with their programming, I hesitate to give complete code as an answer and instead try to make it clear what needs to be written and why.