Day 3 (ish) of my new commitment.

I feel like I have learned a lot in the past few days. I really must remember that it has only been a  few days before I reaffirmed to myself that I was serious about a career in development. I mean … I love working with technology. I love fixing and improving technology of all kinds. Right now I am currently a technician for AT&T and enjoy fixing cell phones and computers for our customers. And for the past few years I have been working my way towards a career in networking/systems administration. And while I’d love that … I mean like I said I love it all. I want to create things. I want to contribute something to a system that people use and be responsible for something that helps other. Programming can do that. It doesn’t matter if I’m working for a large company maintaining their ASP.NET or JAVA intranet tools. I mean it could be that …. Or working for a start up on a new app for mobile devices. Or just working with multiple clients to build web sites. Creation and innovation is something I know I want to be a part of. I know that its something that will continue to make me happy. Yes, money is a factor. I want the economic security that I need to take care of my family and development really does pay well. I’d be lying if I said I never thought about earning a living. But honestly it hasn’t been at the top of mind. Learning has. Learning and doing. I feel like today was a good weekend. I learned a lot. Coming from JavaScript, this been a new learning experience. C# is different. I mean they are very similar in many ways – like the syntax! The C# syntax is no problem coming from JavaScript. But really the OOP concepts are … near the same foundationally yes … but there are big differences in the way C# works with classes and JavaScript does not. I had to get the hang of creating classes and am currently studying the OOP concepts of inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, methods, partials … the basics. So yeah. Similarities and differences from JavaScript. There are things I really love about JavaScript and will continue to improve my JS skills throughout my career. I can’t wait to learn more about new JS frameworks like Ember, Knockout, Underscore etc., (I think those are frameworks ?) But anyway back to C#. My goal in the long run is the .NET platform. Well….short term … but long term at the same time. Because yes of course I plan to learn many more frameworks and languages … the world doesn’t revolve around Microsoft. (I think) But for now … .NET is where I’d like to stay and learn more. But after talking with a great role model and PIuralsight instructor – K. Scott Allen (odetocode.com) I have reminded myself that the foundations are important. Have to have strong JS skills before I can move on to advanced frameworks and I need to get the basics of C# and other .NET tools before I can throw out huge MVC applications. The first job I shoot for, I really wouldn’t be surprised, if it was just HTML/CSS and a little JS. (I’ll be ecstatic over anything web related!)  But yes I’m rambling. Blogging really is a good way to organize your thoughts! And as you can tell I have many of them. So yes. ... Heading on throughout the week I’m going to finish the Scott Allen C# 5.0 fundamentals course and finish reading my C# 5.0 pocket reference (while reading through the  much larger version C# 5.0 in a nutshell http://goo.gl/ozaqov). And I’m also watching a Microsoft Virtual Academy series on C# programming fundamentals which I have found to be a good recap on these subjects. It’s good to see as many people as possible talking on screen about coding and actually coding themselves! So yeah … Aside from basic data types, variables, objects, and classes I’ll tell you in the next blog post what I learned about later in the week. I was happy. I made a small console application today that contained data about all of the Game of Thrones books by George R.R. Martin (which I have yet to read) and it interacted with users by using the speech synthesis reference in the .NET library to implement methods that would read aloud text specific to which book the user wanted to know more about. You would make a selection and the voice would tell you a bit of info or prompt you to make another selection and there would actually be publication information displayed on the screen regarding the book you selected. So yeah just tinkering around. Well I have to get off of here and go to work. People need their stuff fixed!

Happy coding

Derek