About me
Hi there!
My name is Jonathan Lerner, but as the website's title and address suggest, I usually go by Jonny. I was born in Tel-Aviv, Israel, on April 21st 1986. I spent most of my life living in Israel, with the exception of one year between 1990 and 1991. During that time my parents decided to try living in New Zealand, but then decided to return after it didn't work out. I remember that just a little bit before moving there my dad went out and bought a computer. It was my first time ever seeing a computer. It wasn't much of a computer though. The display was embedded in the machine, showing only black and different shades of orange, it was really loud, and it barely did anything. But that was enough to get me interested. Beyond a few Olympic games my dad got with the computer it didn't do much, so I barely remember much else from it.
Growing up in Israel wasn't really as hard as some people in America would imagine. If anything the experience seems to be pretty similar over here, with the exception of a few differences here and there, mainly with the educational system. Having seen computers in school I convinced my dad to buy me a new computer. The one I mentioned earlier we left in New Zealand in some dump as we cleaned up while packing. But that new computer purchase was the first in many more to come about every 18-24 months. I was persistent in my demands to always have a top end machine so I can play better and better games.
I look grumpy because I'm going back to the base in the morning
Starting high school I got hooked on programming. Initially it was HTML, and then I moved up to scripting languages, like mIRC scripts, Javascript. Then I moved on to Basic and Pascal (the latter of which I studied in high school). Because I was enjoying it so much I decided that I'll be making a career out of programming. When I started the 9th grade I started taking on university classes, working towards completing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science by the time I graduate from High School. Eventually I got frustrated with this program though, because it mostly covered math that I felt was irrelevant to what I wanted to do. The more I knew, the more I wanted to be a game developer.
While serving in the Israel military I got to hear about Full Sail, and that's when I started to see my dream materializing. As soon as I got my parents on board I enrolled, and after ending my service in the Israeli military I moved to America, all by myself. I've been living by myself in the US since November 12th 2007, and every day is a little more awesome than the one before :)
On September 4th 2009 I attended my graduation ceremony, which in all honesty felt a bit underwhelming. It doesn't matter though. The important thing is that I'm ready for business!
Nov 14th 2007, around 9am - My 2nd morning here :)