What is Motivated Code Pro?

Motivated Code Pro is About your Life in Software Development 

Hey There!  Scott here with Motivated Code Pro.  

It's no secret that software development is creative and fulfilling.  

It's also stressful!  

It's fun, it's fast, but it's frustrating.  It's demanding, it's difficult, and It's rewarding.  

It's team work and working alone. It's late nights, early mornings, and everything in between.  

It's design work, design patterns, support tasks, and testing steps, and of course it's about coding.  It's always about the code.  

But it's also about soft skills, goal setting, negotiation, stress management, and dealing with difficult people.  

That's life in software development.

If it were easy, everyone would do it.  But it's hard, and if this is the work you have chosen, then you have come to the right place.    

If it happens in software development, there's a good chance I've lived it.  If I haven't lived it, I've likely seen it or know someone who has.  

Think of Motivated Code Pro like this:  You and I are in a coffee shop, maybe at a technical conference, we're in relaxed conversation, visiting, sharing our thoughts, ideas, and concerns. Maybe we have questions or suggestions for one another.  

We're new friends bound by the common thread of life in software development.  

Maybe I have feedback, alternatives and strategies for you, gained from a lifetime in software and entrepreneurship.  

Maybe you have ideas and suggestions for me from your time in the trenches.  Or maybe you're just beginning your software journey.  

Either way, I want to help you take the next step in your software career.  Whether you're just getting started, moving up through the ranks, or starting your own consultancy.  I have been there.  I am there.

And I want you to be there too.

Motivated Code Pro is about you, your life in software, and keeping your career on an upward trajectory.  It's about helping you take the necessary steps to keep you on course and to avoid the pitfalls that would derail your progress.

Motivated Code Pro is a community of likeminded software professionals all sharing three common goals:

  1. Finding success in our current position
  2. Identifying our next role and taking steps to land that role
  3. Achieving work life balance     

Join the Motivated Code Pro Community

Yes, please sign me up for the MCP community.   I don't want to miss any articles or videos about advancing my software career and achieving work life balance!


​What People Are Saying

​Far beyond his considerable coding skills, Scott also brings to the table patience and perspective gained through years in the field. He is not simply a person who can deliver solutions; he can also advise what solutions should be delivered, how, and why. Over and over, Scott has functioned for me like high-beam headlights, enabling me to avoid time-wasting snags in development before I reached them.

​George Reitz

Founder at Learning Engines

​Scott provided the training and knowledge transfer needed to give ​our staff the necessary skills to continue future development and support of the Yard Management System and other systems. While working with Scott, I found him to have a strong work ethic, be knowledgeable, honest and conscientious. He understands not only the technology aspect, but also understands customer service and was always willing to do whatever it took to get the job done and satisfy our customers.


​Jr. McGaha

IT Applications Development Manager at Kenco

​​Scott and his team made & implemented several suggestions for improving our usage reporting processes – highly valuable to the sponsors and investors whose happiness means almost as much to us as that of our users. We couldn’t be more satisfied, and look forward to working with ​Scott and his team on project extensions we are already dreaming up! ​


​​Gregory Judd

​President at Benefits Information Group

​My Software Story

In many ways, software weaved itself into every part of my life starting at age 17.  This was a time when not every home had a personal computer or 2 or 5.  Nor was the internet a "thing" the way it is today.  

Nevertheless, in those days, business was way ahead of public consumption where technology and software development were concerned.  I landed in front of a computer to enter medical billing ​information ​on a green screen terminal (really, ​the screen was black with green letters) and I was hooked.  

Computer programmers would come to our office and make changes to the system.  The screens I worked on would be different the next time I logged in and I thought that was cool.  I mean really cool, and I wondered if I could ever do something like that.  

By the time I was 21, I landed a job as a computer operator, and it was in this job that I learned to program.  It didn't take long and I knew I had found home, so-to-speak, and I've never looked back.

The technologies and platforms have changed. The languages and inter-connectivity have certainly evolved, but I have remained a software developer for my entire career.  

After a few years, my career really took off and I learned to manage people and projects and I moved rapidly up the rungs of the corporate ladder.  

Next thing I knew, the internet and web technologies were everywhere and I moved onto Java, JavaScript and web technologies.  Man, I loved software development and could not have imagined working in another field.

Up to that point, I had programmed and managed and consulted and built software products.  I was conversant in several languages and was able to marry older technologies with newer, more visually exciting development paradigms.  Life was great!

​And then came the day that I landed a job as a CIO.  

I had arrived.  

I had the experience and pedigree and people skills I needed but...

After a few years as a CIO, I came to hate the day-to-day tediousness of budgeting and more budgeting and defending that budget; performance evaluations, personnel management; endless meetings to plan, organize and schedule the next round of meetings to ultimately arrange yet another series of meetings. Rinse and repeat.

I found that I could no longer participate in the things that advanced my career in the first place. The things that got me promoted through the ranks and to the roles that I aspired to were the very things I had to relinquish. Being a good software developer got me promoted right out of being a software developer.  After a while it just didn’t make sense to me.

It was time to reinvent myself.  

My wife and I started a boutique software development consultancy called Pinch Hitter Solutions (phs4j.com), where we have focus on enterprise web and mobile app development.  We have customer relationships around the US.  We use Java Spring and Ext JS frameworks primarily but our customers have a plenty to say about their software development choices and our team can generally accommodate them.  

Motivated Code Pro is a creation of Pinch Hitter Solutions and is my opportunity to help other people (and maybe that's you) grow in their software careers and ultimately move on to their own consultancy if that is their goal.  

Here are some interesting links to my writing from other publications

​5 Keys to Becoming a Successful Consultant as a Software Developerer​​​

Mobile Development: SQL In the Browser

​​Developing Mobile Apps for the IBMi, Part 1​​​

​Developing Mobile Apps for the IBMi, Part 2​​​

​Working with Embedded SQL Is Error-Prone and Messy. Is There an Easier Way?​​​

​Get Productive with PHP and Java in two Minutes​​​

​Embedding SQL in RPG, Java, and PHP Doesn't Have to Be a Headache​​​

​SQL(snap) Eliminates the Burden of Messy Embedded SQL​​​

Embedded SQL Is Just Plain Messy. Is There a Better Way?

Join the Motivated Code Pro Community

Yes, please sign me up for the MCP community.   I don't want to miss any articles or videos about advancing my software career and achieving work life balance!