About Bill Reiss and Blue Rose Systems

I started programming at the age of 12. At the age of 15, I was the president of the local TI 99/4A users group and was selling a couple of my game programs through Asgard Software. My brother Jim was also selling software through the same company including a TI version of Tetris.

At the age of 17, I owned my first PC and did some small projects in C and Pascal and continued doing game programs for the TI platform. At age 21, I discovered Multiple User Dungeons (MUDs) on Unix and ended up enhancing the TINTIN MUD client (written in C) to meet my needs in the game. This expanded into the TINTIN++ project where at its peak I was heading up a multi person development effort. TINTIN++ became wildly popular in the MUD world and is still in use today.

In 1994, I entered the "real world" of corporate software development and was introduced to Windows programming. At the time it was Windows 3.1 16 bit programming, but somehow I stuck with it and have been programming Windows ever since. This has included a mix of C, C++, VB3-6, and more recently C#.

TopCoder is the leading site for online programming competitions. I participate regularly to keep my coding skills sharp under pressure.

My wife, Roberta Kohn, is a Real estate attorney in Lutz, Florida just north of Tampa.

About the Blue Rose

The blue rose is the rarest of roses, and was considered impossible to create because of the total lack of blue pigment in a rose's petals. A Japanese beer company has recently developed a blue rose using gene splicing.