About the Developer
My name is Aaron Todd Sherrill, but friends and family call me Todd. I am the author, developer, and publisher of Chinese Toolbox software. If you want to know something about me, this is a good place to start.
2003 to the present
I have lived in Taiwan with my wife (a native of Taiwan) and two sons since 2003. My wife and I operate a cram school in Taipei, where we teach English to children after their regular school day.
We moved to Taiwan in 2003 from Raleigh, North Carolina firstly to free up more of my time for developing software. Secondly, we wanted our kids to learn Chinese, and we felt the best way would be for them to learn it naturally by
living in a Chinese-speaking country. Taiwan was the obvious choice since that’s where my wife was from. After six years, this goal has been pretty much achieved. Both boys jabber in Chinese all the time. Now I worry about their
English!
1997 to 2003
Just prior to moving to Taiwan, I worked with Apple Computer as a software developer and consultant for over four years. Overall, I have to say this was the best job I ever had. Not only was the work interesting and challenging, but
Apple was very generous. Most of my time at Apple was spent on the US Postal Service project where a team of around 15 programmers (give or take 5-7 at any one time) developed and maintained software for USPS call centers. We developed
web and PC desktop applications almost entirely in WebObjects 4.5 on Windows NT or Windows 2000 (before WebObjects was rewritten entirely for Java).
1996-1997
In 1996 I got a job with NetObjects as a support representative. There I responded to customers’ support requests by phone and email. After a few months, I began handling all the more technical questions from customers,
particularly in regard to the application’s expansion option, its Component Development Kit. Just prior to getting the job at Apple, I was part of the team of programmers developing NetObjects Fusion. That might have something to
do with the reason I’m still using NetObjects Fusion today (as I write)!
1995-1996
In the summer of 1995 I moved from Taiwan to Fremont, California (the San Francisco Bay Area) to work with Addtron, a Taiwanese network hardware company. They manufactured network expansion cards, hubs and switches. Though I had no
former experience in marketing, I was hired to be the marketing manager in their west coast sales office. This job turned out to be a very positive learning experience for me. I oversaw their support operations, handled all advertising,
and managed trade show appearances, including designing booths, coordinating shipping, manning the booth during the show, meeting with customers, explaining product details, etc. I left Addtron after only two expos, COMDEX in Las Vegas
and Network Interop in Atlanta.
Eventually, my interest in software development and the Internet got the best of me, and I moved on to work with NetObjects, an Internet startup. Also, the money was better; my salary increased by over 50 percent by moving to
NetObjects.
1988-1995
I began my career in 1988 with my first full-time job at a company called Chaplet. They were one of the early laptop computer manufacturers in Taiwan. When I accepted the job, I was told I would be one of their BIOS programmers, but
the first day on the job I was given a user manual to edit by hand. I was horrified at the English in the product manual, and almost right away I told my manager it had to be totally rewritten. (Obviously, the girl who wrote the
original manual didn’t pay much attention in English class! Well, to think about it, they’d probably say the same kind of thing about me if I wrote a manual in Chinese. Yes, I’m sure they would!)
Of course, just beginning my career, I had no experience in technical writing, but I knew poor English when I saw it, and I had taken a technical writing course in college. After a few days, a computer (with a 20 MB hard drive) was
issued to me. I installed Microsoft Word for DOS (not Windows—that long ago!), and I began writing. I told my manager that after rewriting the manual, I wanted my programming position back. Turned out I never did any programming
at that job. I developed an interest in writing. I was so proud when my manuals were printed and packaged with the newly manufactured computers. Incredibly, one user manual was given good marks in Portable Computing magazine when they did a complete product comparison between Chaplet’s laptop computer and Toshiba’s laptop computer. In that article Toshiba was referred to as “Goliath” and Chaplet to “David”. Here are some photos of that manual and magazine article.
I was so encouraged by that review and I had developed such pride in my work that I decided to continue as a technical writer. For years afterward I worked as an independent technical writer in Taipei, advertising
my documentation services and writing manuals for the many technology companies in Taipei and the surrounding area. I didn’t make a lot of money, but the work was flexible and I got to work with lots of
different companies. Sometimes I worked at home. Sometimes I hung out at the customer’s office talking with engineers about the product I was documenting. I still have a box of some of the manuals that I wrote.
In 1991 I took on a special project; I was to write the Programmer’s Reference Manual for UMAX’s
scanners. This was my first chance to get back into programming, though in a limited way. My first challenge was to learn the C programming language, since, amazingly, that was not one of the languages taught in the
two universities I attended. I had learned FORTRAN, COBOL, PL/1, Pascal and Assembly, but not C. By the end of 1991, after having finished the reference manual and having learned the basics of C, it was time to
move on. I needed to learn C++ and Windows programming.
One of my greatest mistakes was to decide that taking on both C++ and Windows programming simultaneously was too much for me to handle. Eventually, I decided to learn C++ first. Windows would
come later—in hindsight it turned out to be a lot later! I considered for quite a while what kind of project I could do that would help me learn these two technologies. At a friend’s suggestion, I decided to write an
authoring program for DOS so teachers could interactively create their own English teaching materials. At the time I had no idea how much I was biting off or how long I would spend working on the project. If I had
known, I’m sure I would have chosen a different initial project. I began the programming in early 1992, and had one false start. After almost a year I decided my code was useless, and I started over. I bought a book
on object-oriented graphics programming for DOS which helped immensely.
There was one huge problem with my plan. The more I wrote in C++ for DOS, the less I wanted to start all over for Windows. I was trying to produce a truly useful piece of software, and DOS was still popular in the
early 90’s. I think I could see the death of DOS coming, but I didn’t want to believe or accept it.
At some point in the early 90’s my focus changed from developing an authoring tool for English teachers, to developing an authoring tool for learning Chinese but still based on MS-DOS.
1985-1987
In May 1985 I finally graduated from college. I had a Bachelor of Science degree from Louisiana State University in Shreveport in Computer Science. It would be at least three years before I would begin utilizing this degree.
As a young person I was very dedicated and active in the church. The church encouraged all young people to devote a year or two after college to serve the church full-time, so naturally, that is what I did. A year
later in the summer of 1986 a major church training in Taiwan opened up for international participation. Still single and not yet employed, the church strongly encouraged me to participate in the Taiwan training. I had
been hoping to start my career, but I relented and went to Taiwan as a church trainee. A term was one semester, so I figured I needed to be in Taiwan for at most four months. It was worth a try; I had only four months to lose.
Around 300 of us flew from Los Angeles to Taiwan in August 1986 to participate in what we all called “The Full-Time Training in Taipei”, or FTTT for short.
Well, one thing led to another. In November, three quarters through the training, I met my wife to be, so
obviously I remained in the training for the next semester. (Actually, my experience was a little more spiritual than this.) By the summer of 1987 we knew we wanted to get married. After less than one year in Taiwan,
nearly all of my original colleagues from the US returned home. I stayed in Taiwan, for one obvious reason. In the summer of 1987 I moved out of the church training center and rented my own apartment. Right away,
I began teaching English and studying Chinese.
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