Published: 02/08/2022

I started programming when I was 13 years old. I stole my brothers HTML and Javascript book and built some simple web forms. I had no idea that a backend was needed or even what a backend was. I just knew I had some gray buttons on the screen and it did things. I went on to play with some web forum software, launching my own unsuccessful internet forum.

When I had that form, I learned a ton about HTML, CSS, PHP and SQL. I learned some basic SQL injection and wanted to be a hacker. That lasted a whole hot second. When I was 16, I had enough of playing around, I wanted to get serious about learning and mastering code. I wanted to be a designer and build really fancy websites. So what did I do? I spent the next summer, the entire summer, learning CSS. Just CSS. Focusing on layouts, positioning and how to get things to work with IE 6 and firefox. I learned all about grid systems, margins, footers and I dived into design using Photoshop. I used to frequent sites like PSD Vault or Tuts Plus. I literally spent hours learning each tool and manipulating images in photoshop. Then I learned how to lay out and position it on the web so it will look really beautiful and pretty.

Here’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to build visual systems that were beautiful. I wanted to be an artist. I wanted the web to be pretty and to build things people would use.

What am I doing today? Mostly avoiding design work. Design and development tend to be thankless work, people don’t see all the mechanisms going on behind the scenes. One thing led to another and I got into backend development. First it was Coldfusion then PHP then Rails.

As a Full Time NodeJS developer for the last 5 years, I really miss Rails. There is no better framework for the web than Rails (Maybe SpringBoot but thats another story).

I want to build stuff, beautiful stuff, that people will use.