Background

Computers

My first computer was a Commodore 64. That was released in 1982, but I wasn't even born yet. I had mine in the early 90s. All our stuff came from garage sales or the discount rack back then. We only used the C64 for playing games. I remember really enjoying Blue Max and Archon. Eventually we got a Windows 95 machine that we used for schoolwork and games. Mostly Starcraft and doom clones.

Programming

I learned HTML from a website that was called HTML Goodies. It might still be out there. I learned HTML4 and very little CSS. I wasn't really interested in CSS, I've never had success making designs.

PHP I also learned on my own by just reading up various tutorials on the web and spending a lot of time in the docs section of php.net. Same for MySQL. I wrote some amateur code back in the day, but I think that these days I write "good" PHP, or about as good as PHP can get.

I made some simple stuff, made a few complex things. In my early days I was most proud of a phpMyAdmin-like app that worked on a flat-file database called TextDB. And, of course, NewLife Blogger. I'll have to dedicate a whole page to that one day. It's worth it.

Eventually, I signed up for a real programming class. I remember Keith Mehl's Intro to C++ class. It was amazing. The teacher knew everything and had a million stories of being a coder at a real company. He was excellent at teacing the fundaments and I still remember his lessons on abstraction. I haven't regretted becoming a software engineer.

I'm trying to make a transition from a PHP dev to a Java dev. Hopefully it all works out for the best!