Zen and the art of WebDev

Apologies for the rather esoteric sounding subject - but a recent thread has started going off on a tangent on the matter of how we learn about IT related stuff, so I thought I'd open a topic here about it.

What I'm interested in is how long ppl have been in the IT industry and how they rate their level of knowledge, whether it be on a localized level (ie HTML) or on a wider level (ie 'networking') - and also if they believe there'll ever be a time that they consider themselves not 'newbies' to something or other. Also if you ever do consider yourself not a 'newbie', can you ever learn anything new?

Personally I (naively) thought I knew quite a bit about networking for example after I'd been a network engineer for a couple of years. However at that time I'd never come close to UNIX and was shocked at how little I knew about networking when I eventually discovered the 'pocketsize UNIX' that is linux a few years back.

Ditto with webdev work. If only the first ever PC I bought had linux on and not windows...

Anyway, here's a few sites/people I find quite inspiring:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/ - incredible dude who seems pretty close to UNIX enlightenment.
http://www.mandrake.net/ - another dude who's close to enlightenment (he helped build it;\)
http://www.ee.ryerson.ca:8080/~elf/hack/ - various links to 'hacking zen' - the original meaning of 'hack' and not the bastardized CNN interpretation of the word

been designin webpages for about a yr now, and still a newbie in every respect

Mine is probably interesting story .

I first got to know what is it after my 12th exams.
I did one course called DMSO .
Wondering what is it ? It's Diploma in Microsoft Office !!!

Fine, that was a start.
From that point, I fell in love with computers.
I used to work on PC for 7 hours flat eventhough I wasn't knowing much.

Then in my first year of engineering I was introduced to C.
We had to solve computational problems using C.
Man, what a language !!!
I was just crazy about programming.

I explored it the best way I can, though I feel I know very little of C.

Then I was just learning more and more stuff.
I learned assembling of hardware.
Installation of software. ( nothing easier than that !!)

Then came C++. Again liked it a lot. learned it by heart.
Then came JAVA. oh.....first lanaguage that sucked me !!
Then VB.
Then VC++. ( found it hard as I didnt learn it properly !! )
Then came scripting stuff.
First learned Perl. Was doing Perl stuff only. I used to think PHP is passe and for boyz and not for men.
Then I thought why not give a try to PHP.
Then gave a try, found it quite amazing and powerful !!

Still learning. kid as far as PHP knowledge goes.
Actually I am gonna start one site called phpkid.

Hey its in development and actually I got to move to linux so you might receieve PHP errors. But its not my fault.

I learned HTML /Javascript stuff too. You can check details about that here.

So that is how it all has gone for me.

Actually one thing afftected me is that I had done graduation in EC cause I couoldnt get admission in Computers.
So..
Though I am now going to do Masters in CS. Lets see..

Its been 4 years in this field, still I am quite a newbie.
I would like to be a pro like freebsd atleast in one field if not more .
Lets see when I can have some great control over some specific stuff,

By the way this is intersting topic,
I would like to know views of freebsd, jeffct,andandess,rod , sepoditia for sure.

JD

I guess I'm kind of an unusual person to end up in this industry.

I am 36 years old now, and although I took a few computer programming courses in college (like Fortran, Basic, heh), I didn't really get back into programming until the world had changed drastically. (I actually graduated with an English degree) In '94, I started designing websites, just as an experiment, and found out that people were willing to pay me for it .

I was always a little disappointed to be just a designer, though, so I started getting books and software. I played around with Visual Basic, but hated it. I played with Access, and at first loved it, but then grew to hate it. I did some development in ASP, in 97/98 , but ended up with the same dislike of it that I had for VB. It was just ugly to work with. I never really had the time to start playing with C or C++ since I was out of school and had to make a living.

But everytime I worked with something that was an open standard, I found I loved it. Javascript was the eye-opener for me. Then, I started playing with Linux, and became acquainted with the concept of open source. Since I was making a living mainly by developing websites, PHP was naturally the first open source environment I would really play with. From the enjoyment I had working with PHP and Linux, starting in '98, I just decided I was going to become a full-fledged programmer. So I just dug in and started to develop e-commerce applications, learning from the ground up.

Then, in 2000, I got to really test myself by developing a large project (www.mystickyweb.com--a web-based design application), using every last drop of my knowledge of HTML and Javascript, along with a serious amount of PHP and Perl. Since then, I have been freelancing in web-based applications, for medium-sized businesses. Along the way, I have learned a few of the innards of Linux, FreeBSD, and Apache.

It always cracks me up when people ask me how I could be doing this stuff if I didn't study it in college. When I was in college, there was no web, there was even no GUI, until Macintosh showed up in my last couple of years.

I learned this stuff the same way every techno-geek learns: reading and experimenting. This applies whether you are 14 or 45.

Completely Agree !!!!!

By the way, mystickyweb is jam of a program. amazing. I checked the demo and I am IMPRESSED. Does it only run on IE ? or supports other browsers too.

anyways see you after a LONGGGGGGGGGGGGGG time rycamor. Where have you been and how is it going ??

what is brainscraps about ? When it would go up ?

Good to have you back at forums !!

JD

I don't think most people can consider themselves anything but newbies in this environment, since it changes so radically so often. The way I got into this is actually kind of a comback story. I started out on a commodore 64 and taught myself Basic from the book that came with it. Talk about rough beginnings. There could not have been a much worse pc than that C64. Well, I learned Basic and learned DBase4 in trade school my last year in high school.

After that I dropped programming from 1991 to 1998 when I got out of the military and started to college. That was a real eye opener for me. So I learned VB and Cobol and C++, or atleast took the classes, can't say I learned a whole lot, but I can doggie paddle through the sea of code for while before I drown. I don't think I really became a programmer until I started with the company I work with now because of who I work with. I learned more from him than I have any class in school. He is an OpenBSD developer.

So, I was turned onto C, which I like more than C++, *nix types and finally started toying with web designing since this company wanted to make a majority of its applications cross-platform. What better way to do that then make it a web-app. Then, finally, we installed PHP, and it is so similar to PHP that I caught on to it rather quickly.

I still don't think I will ever feel like anything but a newbie on these language, but I do enjoy learning more about it everyday. Hell, just reading a lot of the post on the PHP forum has helped me.

Hey JD, thanks.

Oh, I didn't go anywhere, I have just been operating in stealth mode ;-). I just had a couple really crazy months. Most recently, I had the fun of visiting Jamaica, where I spent a week trying to remake a company's IT department. (My father-in-law's company)

Yes, StickyWeb at the moment only supports IE 5+. I really never had the time to do everything I wanted with it. We were promised a staff of 6 programmers, and in the end, I and my colleague got... no programmers. So it was just two of us. We managed to write things fairly modular, though, so it wouldn't be too big of a stretch to support Netscape 6/Mozilla.

If StickyWeb get's its funding, I will be going back there full-time to create the next version, which will be a much more sophisticated system. I learned a lot from the experience, and now have some ideas I consider revolutionary. My real desire is to create a web-based combination groupware + IDE.

Brainscraps is just my personal whimsical domain, but I have a concept for a personal knowledgebase, that I might call BrainScraps, and which I would release under the GPL. At the moment, if you browse to www.brainscraps.com, you will see the site I am developing for RightASP.com, which is a venture I and my colleague are planning at the moment. If we do go ahead with it, we will be setting up a rack of servers at a high-bandwidth colocation facility, to host web-based applications. Gonna be fun. I am considering using the amazing servers they have developed at www.racksaver.com . (4 processors in a 1.5" case).

So you can see, I've been busy, but I always come back to Devshed .

Hey,

When you again get back to sticky web, let me know. I would be more than willing to JOIN you. okie ? Please add my email in your addressbook if you can't remeber it up. But do consider me. You know more than anything else, I liked about sticyweb is the concept and the way you have visualised.

So what you have exactly thought for brainscraps.com . cause I find it a nice domain name.

And its always great to have you at forums,
Keep posting,

JD

P.S. : Have you ever connected to oracle using PHP ? I would have to do it tomorrow. so I guess there would be problem connecting. so can I email you incase i have problem. let me know.

I haven't forgotten about you JD. Don't worry about that. You are on my short list of potential developers. I have just been kept waiting in limbo for a year now, on this StickyWeb thing. I will definitely be considering you for other ventures I am planning.

I haven't connected PHP with Oracle yet, so I can't help you there.

rycamor - excellent site at mystickyweb and the idea behind it is brilliant. Seems to be what IT/programming is all about - allowing users to organize data efficiently and with as little hassle as possible. Reminds me of a site I looked at whilst browsing through MSDN which allowed people to complete various financial documents (spreadsheets and the like) through a web-based interface, including saving the documents online. That's a real gem you have there rycamor.

Onslaught I can appreciate what you're saying about not considering yourself a true programmer til you've learnt by working side-by-side with someone. The site I cut my PHP teeth on is about to be made more 'professional' (by this I think they mean, money-earning) and so hopefully they'll keep the underlying PHP code and I'll be able to learn more about how to make web design pay a bit!

@ the C64 thing as well - I had that BASIC book too!

JD your site is looking ace - also the phpkid site is taking shape eh? If you'd like any articles crafting, let me know.

When this site was first envisioned it was supposed to be just a couple of pages for our customers to be able to view our real-time data and a few graphs (that was fun). Now it is being planned to take the place of quite a few major applications that we run because of the power of php and the capacity to run on any platform that can access the internet. I am enjoying the hell out of this and learning more everyday.

Gotta love that old time Basic Munk...
That, and DOS/Command Line. I get kind of tickled at some people now when I mention doing something in dos or on the command line and they look at me like I am speaking a foreign language.

I visited the mystickyweb & phpkid site. Both seem very good. Loved the menu design on mystickyweb.

Thanks mate !!!



Yeah, I am working. the current layout is just for TP. I gotta change it. The main problem is that right now I am on Win 2k and it shows some strange permission error which neithe me or my web host can solve around ( Actually one very nice fellow who has just established Webhosting company is hosting it for free. So..starting glitches.. ) So thats why I am unable to start.

And articles, hm.....
Till date my plan is that phpkid would be by me.
Hm...may be I will have interviews of you ppl as cool php fundoos ???

take care,
JD