So this is the first post on my new journey of development.

Well, let’s take a step back on that. This is the first post on my journey of rediscovering development.

Just out of high school, like a good student, I started college. This had been a point of contention for me over the prior couple years because I was trying to figure out a major and decided to go into computer science since I had been doing some web site building in the past couple of years and had enjoyed my computer programming class as a senior. Remember, this was the late 1990’s/early 2000’s, so the web from a consumer perspective was really starting to pick up. I don’t remember what language we had done in my programming class (probably C), but I had been learning a lot of web stuff using HTML, CSS, Angelfire, and Geocities.

I finished my computer science program at our local community college (all C and C++) then transferred to an online university that there was an agreement in place with. We lived in a small town and we had our first child in my second year of community college, so online was the best option. In the transition into that program, I had to switch languages from C++ to Java. This was tough at the time because I really only had about a year or so of experience in C and C++. Additionally, I struggled a lot with some of the more advanced stuff (algorithm performance, as always, was a tough one) and switched my major to web development.

I enjoyed that program much more, and was much more successful in it. During this time, I was working in IT for the community college I graduated from, then moved to Arizona and started working full time in IT. I continued this work, grew and got promoted quickly from a tech, into a senior tech, to a manager, to eventually a director over the next 11 years. I did everything under the sun: system administration, desktop support, a little web content editing, a little networking, some server administration, etc. I also earned my Master’s in Educational Technology during this time.

That brings us up to current. As it stands now, I have started to rediscover development while exploring different paths as my career grows. My journey through this exploration is leading me to find that I have much more patience and understanding of how systems work and a whole new perspective on devlopment as a whole, as well as rediscovering my love for the web.

I want to use this blog to stay accountable, post regularly, and outline my learning as a potential resource to others after me. Some of these posts will be long, some will be very short, some will just be bullet points of what I have done. They may not be every day, but they will be posted with regularity at least a couple times a week.

The layout will also change a lot. This is hosted via Github and Jekyll, so I’m using this as a learning experience with those technologies, as well.

Please let me know what you think and would love to hear from all of you!