This year is 2017 and I would have started using PHP in 2001. At some point in time, I would have worked on moving from mysql to mysqli, learned stored procedures, and Object-Oriented PHP, and migrated to using PDO. Over the past few weeks, I have worked on implementing JSON, API’s and (partially) writing my first API in PHP! And for once, having use for overloading a constructor method, which is apparently not possible in PHP!
I have written a lot of ASP/PHP CRUD web applications without ever doing a lot of client-side scripting (apparently the kids today call this “front-end” development). When you learn JavaScript in the 90’s during the “browser wars”, you learned to avoid using JavaScript like the plague. Especially when the introduction of ADSL helped legitimize processing everything server-side.
Fast forward 20’ish years: JavaScript is all the rage and we care about download speeds again. Have I entered the Twighlight Zone!?
I took a “break” (if you can call it that, I never put down my keyboard, just said “fuck the corporate world!” and left my tech career, but still maintained my websites, which included coding) and went into the Health and Wellness field for a few years. After a ton of training for a new career, I found myself more passionate about web development, only now with even more business ideas.
While I am a seasoned web developer, I am also an entrepreneur who is incredibly interested in becoming a social entrepreneur and have rediscovered my passion for front-end web development. I have finally started working with package managers, pre-processors, version control, JavaScript frameworks, and a bunch of other cool shit that wasn’t around when I started my career! While I have loved working in a LAMP environment for the past 16 years, I have been quite eager to find ways to speed up my development time, improve my development workflow and to finally tackle the beast that is JavaScript! Here’s hoping the Kool-Aid doesn’t make me sick!
Now to start putting all that I have been learning over the past year to work. I am still invested in finishing off the online courses I have registered for while I work on integrating this knowledge, upgrading my portfolio and enjoying the fun ride as I try to become a social entrepreneur and hopefully, finally start reaping the rewards of my efforts.
Speaking of which, I got accepted into the Chingu Cohorts program with freeCodeCamp which starts tomorrow! Looking forward to working with other developers remotely and facing the challenges of that because I want to be doing remote contract work.
Happy Coding!