Programming Skills
My interest in computers began from a early age thanks to some friends who loaned us an Acorn Electron. This was basically a cut-down home version of the BBC Micro that was so popular in schools in the UK back in the 1980s. Boasting a whopping 32Kb of RAM and a tape recorder, it was hardly a behemoth of computing power, but I owe it much. The BBC BASIC programming language was the first I learned, and I later built upon these skills throughout high school, although by then the Acorn Archimedes was the machine of choice.
My computer interest later migrated to the Amiga, and then, after a short career hiatus, the PC. My first job with computers was at Somerset County Council, and prior to this I had never seen a network or the Internet, and had barely used a PC. My programming during this era was confined largely to WordPerfect Macros and a bit of Visual Basic.
I moved from the Council to a (no longer existing) multimedia company in Somerton by the name of Orchard Communications Design Group. After rapidly learning and mastering Macromedia Authorware, I moved into HTML & Perl for the first time. I guess you could say I never looked back.
I soon changed from Perl to ASP - at the time, I found the Perl syntax rather confusing, and felt instantly comfortable with ASP’s BASIC style syntax. I wouldn’t call myself an ASP programmer though - I’m certainly not current, although I’m sure I could find my way around.
I got fed up with ASP and the amount of code I had to write to achieve simple tasks, so I thought I would try PHP, and in turn MySQL. This was a key turning point in my career, and I have no regrets at all that I chose the open-source PHP/MySQL route. I am now an advanced PHP programmer with excellent SQL skills, focusing on object oriented code with PHP 5.
The landscape of the web has changed dramatically over the years, and I have been particularly excited with the possibilities that have arisen through emerging technologies. I have now gained a high proficiency with Javascript, AJAX and JSON, with a preference for the Mootools framework.
When I have found time in between coding websites and online database applications, I have started learning C++. The syntax that originally scared me off Perl is now my favourite way of writing code, and the similarities in syntax between PHP, Javascript and C++, mean that it is a natural progression for me to start picking up C++.
I do have occasion to write software, and at present I use REALbasic. What I love about RB is that I can write code and design screens in one IDE, and then compile for Mac, Windows & Linux. Perfect. It has many bugs and annoyances, but they are on the ball with updates and bug fixes, and the community is extremely helpful (unlike the Mootools forum users). The MySQL plugin for RB opens up a whole world of online software possiblities!
I think that when you have been programming as long as I have, syntax is just a minor issue to deal with. I always recommend that new programmers really work on their theory, because once you get that down, it’s just a case of learning language-specifics and syntax.
It’s been a long journey to get to this point, and despite feeling that I am now very advanced in my key skill areas, I do still have much to learn… but that’s the fun of programming: you never stop learning. No matter how good you are, you can always pick up new things, and that’s what keeps it interesting.