The past and the future

I published my first, personal website somewhere in 1996 - 1997. It was written in quite broken HTML (consisting of ~90% font tags, since things like CSS didn’t really exist) and it looked horrible. After a while, I started adding stuff like Javascript and some very basic PHP, which probably just made things worse than they already were (the site only worked in Netscape Navigator, IIRC).

Years passed and I started working as a web developer (2003 - 2004), did some other odd jobs, went to college, and returned to the Internet as a systems developer in 2012.

Now, for the future part.

I’ve been spending quite a lot of time hacking PHP over the last couple of years. While I believe that PHP is moving in the right direction with stuff like Laravel, Composer and Packagist, as well as some nice features in new releases of the language itself - I also feel that it’s time to leave the PHP world and focus on something new.

After fiddling around with Java, Golang and Python, I got my hands on MonoDevelop. Having used C# in college, I threw together a small test project - and it was so easy to build stuff. MonoDevelop however, was a bit buggy under Linux (mainly debug-issues and missing filenames on the editor tabs), so some of my excitement was converted into frustration along the way.

After reinstalling Windows and Visual Studio Express (VS), I’m a happy developer. VS is a truly fantastic IDE and it has improved a lot since I last used it in 2008. However, building simple test apps is one thing, and learning a platform like .Net is something completely different. In order to get a decent foundation I’ve bought the book C# 2012 for Programmers (5th ed) which seems to cover a lot of different things in the .Net-universe.

I have no idea how long it’ll take to work through the 1200 pages of that book (especially with the help of a soon to be 5 months old baby). But I’ll get there. I’ll probably add rewriting this site in .Net MVC 5 as a bonus project too.

[irony]Just to make sure I have something to do during the evenings and weekends.[/irony]

I’ll try to post some updates on my progress over the coming weeks.