About the Developer and the CT Project
My name is Aaron Todd Sherrill, but friends and family call me Todd. I am the author, developer, and publisher of Chinese Toolbox software.
I am a software developer, a teacher, a student of Chinese, a husband of 21 years (to the same wife!), a father of two wonderful boys (18 and 13), and, I suppose, an entrepreneur. I’ve lived in Taiwan for about 16 years on two separate occasions. In January 2010 I returned to North Carolina where I lived previously while working for Apple as a software consulting engineer. In 2003 my wife and I moved to Taiwan and set up a language school which we still own and operate. Besides working with my wife to manage the business, I taught English to young children in Taiwan for about six years in our own business. This was no doubt the most enjoyable job I’ve ever had, and one to which I may very well return in the future. Our cram school in Taipei continues to grow, providing classes in a number of different subject areas, including Chinese literature, biology, physics, math, and of course, English. Our cram school has expanded beyond my wife and myself, and now employes a number of other teachers and office workers.
Some of the computer code in the Chinese Toolbox project originated in the early 1990’s while I was working and studying Chinese in Taipei. At the time I was attempting to learn the C++ programming language, and since MS-DOS was still popular at the time, I did my programming for DOS. My original program was designed as an authoring tool for English teachers in Taiwan. Later, I began began adding functionality to help me in my study of Chinese. In 1999 I began a new Windows project. Much of the DOS code was ported and significantly rewritten for the Windows version of the program. I have worked continuously on this project since then, usually part-time, and most recently full-time.
In August 2007 I released the first publicly downloadable product, Chinese Toolbox FREE (CTF). I’ve updated CTF a few times, and in 2009 I released the first version of a more advance product, Chinese Toolbox READER. This year I will release a version of Chinese Toolbox READER that has most of the features I would have wanted when I first began studying Chinese. Hopefully, you will consider the upcoming release to be worthy of your support; the initial license fee will be under $30. Supporting this project will allow me to continue working on the project full-time, and hopefully the project can be expanded beyond myself only. I have so many ideas for developing Chinese-learning software. Others have developed useful software for learning Chinese, but I don’t think a truly marvelous yet very affordable Chinese-learning program has ever been created. With your support, maybe Chinese Toolbox READER will be the first.