I originally came to The Builder Academy as an upstart builder that thought he knew everything there was to know about building. At the time I had built on Smaug and ROM derivatives, but never a CircleMUD. I had used mobprogs, roomprogs, and objprogs before and scoffed when originally told that DG Scripts (Death Gate Scripting System, originally was used in a mud of the same name) were far more flexible and could do anything that progs could and much more.

Now, 3 years later, I know much more both about building in general, and have become sufficiently proficient, in my eyes at least, in DG through trial and error as well as the help of my once teachers, whom I now consider to be my friends and peers. Also where I once believed I knew everything there was to know about building, I now know I don't know everything there is to know, and that in fact no matter how much I may continue to learn, I indeed never will.

Over time it has become apparent that building is not where my passion lies at all, but in coding and scripting (DG), and therefore I rarely build zones of my own, but absolutely love helping people with their own zones by answering any questions they have regarding building mechanics and/or anything scripting related ranging from making the mobs in their zone speak and perform random emotes, to scripted poker games, quest shops, scripted pet shops, and scripted calculators that can perform exponential math (I mentioned I have too much time on my hands most of the time, right?).

TBA is also now an actual codebase (tbaMUD) which has taken over the development of CircleMUD after the original Developer, Jeremy Elson, retired. In the last year since tbaMUD began with the release of CircleMUD 3.5 we have released 6 releases, the most recent being 3.55. I thank tbaMUD for turning thousands of builders including myself into capable capable builders, and specifically Rumble and Shamra for being great teachers and foremost great friends.