How I started programming

I learned about programming when I was 12, three years after I began building computers. I asked my Dad one day (at the time he was working at Digital as a technical writer) how the games and programs on the computer were created. He didn't know a whole lot about programming, but he knew of the BASIC programming language and told me I should get a book and learn it. So I bought a book and started using QBASIC on MS-DOS 6.22. From there I moved to Visual Basic (which I later realized was a big mistake). VB was very much like BASIC and making the transition was very easy. I coded "AOL apps" for awhile (for those who remember: Punters, Mail Bombs, ChatRoom Busters, etc.) until AOL started cracking down on such things.

A few years later, when programming for money came into view, I discovered that I should really be familiar with C or C++. So I glanced through a couple of C programming books and wow, what a difference from BASIC! My mental understanding of how programming languages worked had been spoiled by the simplistic syntax of BASIC and VB. It took many, many books to finally get a basic understanding of C and C++. I also flipped through a couple of Java books around this time because I heard the syntax was similar to C. Besides, who wouldn't want to learn a programming language called Java?

HTML is something I have almost always known how to use (I can't even remember when I first learned it) and I never really thought of it as a programming language. When I started to realize how important, and powerful, dynamic web applications were becoming, I decided to investigate what it was that made the HTML dynamic (after all, if you view the source of a dynamic web page, it usually just looks like plain HTML!). I discovered, almost accidentally, the open-source programming language PHP (PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) and quickly started learning it. I later learned about ASP (Microsoft's Active Server Pages) and JSP (JavaServer Pages) (wow, am I glad I found PHP first!). Since then I have also learned a lot about databases, including database design and the basic principles of good database design. The most popular database used with PHP at the time was MySQL, so that is what I studied. I've also had some light exposure to MSSQL.

Currently, I am working at a software startup company called Aerva, Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts doing everything from software support and debugging to being the "company muscle" (I'm the only one with a truck). I have built, and currently manage, their Support Center using PHP & MySQL, although I have also had to write some bash and Perl (ugh!) scripts to interface with their software provisioning process. I continue to work on adding new features to the Support Center to help streamline regular processes while at the same time increasing my knowledge of various programming languages and the Linux operating system.

I code with PHP on a daily basis (on a MacBook Pro using MAMP and Eclipse) and I am currently working on several of my own web projects. I just finished working on a little application called ASAP - Automated Staging and Publishing, which allows me to automate the process of checking out a project from CVS and then rsync'ing it to a remote server for staging or publishing purposes.

Everyone says PHP is "easy" to learn, and although they are probably right they fail to realize that its simplicity is also its weakness. To code good and secure PHP you need to have a strong understanding of the language and how best to use its many features. In addition to continuing to perfect my understanding of the PHP programming language and related OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) technologies, I wish to learn more about Java, XML, and AJAX.