I am lucky enough to be working along-side several extremely talented technologists, which is partially what inspired me to dive more deeply into coding myself. As I started to tell them about the fact that I was going to get my hands dirty with development, they have all said to me at one point or another (without fail): “Get a passion project, and you’ll learn a lot faster.” This seems to also be a very commonly held belief in the community.
So, I’ve got two.
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This blog. I’m committing to chronicling the things I learn as I work on my coding skills. As I build things, I will share them. Even if I think they suck. Because honestly, those things are going to teach me a lot about writing better code, and maybe lead to better ideas over the long haul. And as I get better, and more knowledgeable, I’m hoping that what I learn can be used to help others build great software. Because if there’s one thing I know for sure: nothing worth doing is easy, and it’s always a lot more fun (and generally successful) when you do it with a team.
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My passion projects. Building a couple of applications that will help me do my current job(s) better (which I’ll explain as I progress), and one or two apps that I have ideas for that I think may be fun, useful, and possibly make a solid contribution to the world.
I’m doing this all primarily for my own edification and skills development. I’m a guy that has a deep background in integrated communications. I’ve created a lot of very cool tech with a lot of very talented developers over the course of my career so far, and I’ve learned a lot about how to design and build these solutions.
But as I continue to refine my coding skills, I realize that some of what I learned was done vicariously, which gave me a partial understanding of what’s going on under the hood. But actually coding the solutions is an altogether different challenge. And I’m glad I’ve taken that up. Let’s see what I can build!
For now, back to coding.