I am a person that loves to learn and likes to help others learn. This website is dedicated to learning and promoting technology. I basically eat, sleep and breath Web Development/ Software Engineering. I’ve been doing web development since 2005. I tutored many subjects in college over 2 different degrees Accounting and Computer Science.
I used to own a landscape construction company for almost 20 years until the economy crash of 2008. I used software starting in 2006 like you see on HGTV where I would measure the peoples property, build their house into the system and design their landscape. I could show them what it looked like from outside the house, from inside viewing out a window. I could show them their house during the day or the night. I could add landscape lighting and even age the entire landscape by 20+ years to show them what it would look like. It was so fun and awesome.
I started teaching myself web development in 2005 after someone I paid for a website ripped me off. It was easy back then. I used a program called NAMO web editor. It was a “What you see is what you get” editor. It came with a book about HTML + CSS.
I started to teach myself Java programming in 2008 while going to college for Accounting. After graduating accounting with a 4.0Gpa I couldn’t find work so I went to college for Computer Science for 2.5 years before dropping out due to cost in 2012.
Even with a 3.98Gpa and tutoring 20+ courses per week, as the president of the college Technology club and member of 2 honors societies was not enough to get me any financial aid help. No grants. No Scholarships etc. So I dropped out with $25,000 in debt. I didn’t want it to be $60,000. It just didn’t make sense to go so deep into debt.
Since that time I have learned a lot more than I did while in College. In the last 14 years I have done nothing but read, program and learn about everything I can in the field of Computer Science. From programming to software engineering and electrical engineering, all I do is learn.
Things I have learned in college or on my own.
This list is some of what I have learned. I am no expert in any subject, but I have the ability to quickly become a near master in anything.
Computer Science related
When you see self taught it means I own books on the subject and have studied it in depth, not just surfed the internet or watched videos. I own hundreds and hundred of books. I spend most time reading and researching.
- Oracle like version 8 LOL a long time ago
- MySQL. I still use this daily
- Ansible for automating devops
- SQL -> structured Query language.
- RDBMS -> college and self taught Relational Database management systems, MySQL for example.
- ORM’s -> self taught Doctrine. I prefer pure SQL though. LOL
- Relational Database design -> learned this in college and personal, another reason I don’t like ORM’s
- CSS -> learned this in college and personal
- HTML -> learned this in college and personal
- XML -> learned this in college and personal
- UML -> unified modeling language, learned this in college
- Multiple Adobe products and matching Linux based software Flash, PhotoShop, etc.
- Hacking and Security. I started hacking software at 13 back in DOS days. LOL To stop a hacker one must become a hacker and think like a hacker.
- Javascript -> I use this daily, pure Javascript, not React or Angular etc. But I do use Jquery to make life easier.
- Actionscript -> Dead now. Now I program the Canvas with Javascript
- PHP -> I use this daily for my personal apps
- Symfony -> Same as PHP I use it daily
- Golang -> Learned it to decide if I wanted to use it to build my apps.
- Scala -> Learned it to decide if I wanted to use it to build my apps. It is a bit much for what I do. But Play framework is nice
- Scala Play Framework -> learned it to decide if I wanted to use it to build apps. It uses AKKA. I went with Symfony because it had more plug and play modules, making development faster.
- PERL -> learned it in college, created a social app with it and more. Excellent language for hacking.
- Java -> I started teaching myself version 1.4 in 2008 I also used it in college some. JVM used to be a super resource hog.
- BASH -> the linux terminal programming language. I shell script lots of stuff for Linux.
- VB.NET -> I used this in college. It was fun to learn for building Windows applications.
- Sketchs/C -> I use this to program Arduino and other micro controllers
- Redis -> taught myself about this
- nginx -> taught myself about this because apache is a pain to configure
- Apache2+ -> I have used this beast over a decade. I quit using it in preference of Nginx
- Varnish cache -> self taught. Varnish is used with Nginx as a cache for your web site
- Computer and Server design -> college and I taught myself this. I took a simple computer systems class in college. But I supplemented that by surfing amazon and newegg.com and reading the part descriptions and matching them up, then buying the parts and building the computers. I also built real actual 6u servers with 2 dual core AMD and 32Gb ram. I used this for experimenting back before the cloud existed. I am a little old. LOL
- Networking -> I continually teach myself more. It a very important subject to know the basics of
- Software design -> self taught, basically how to structure a software program, how to split up the pieces, what things need to happen and how to most efficiently do them
- Hardware Architecture -> self taught continually learning. Similar to Server design, except it includes VM’s, cloud etc.
- Devops -> self taught and continually learning more. This includes everything from writing the code and pushing it to a Repository to testing and cycling old code to new code and reversing if needed.
- Software oriented architecture -> self taught. SOA predated Microservices. It is very similar in structure, but different and not as scaleable.
- Microservice Architecture -> self taught still learning and writing. Most people jumped onto the microservice train with Docker and Kubernettes that is a bad idea. Most people do not need microservices AT ALL
- Functional programming -> self taught using Scala and javascript and lots of books and research
- OOP programming -> self taught with lots of books and research. I say OOP is the best way to write terrible code that makes you feel really smart. Just create a large project and then go to make major changes later, you will see what I mean.
- Procedural programming -> self taught People do not usually know about this form of simple programming where you do not have to complicate things up. It is so efficient. It is almost like functional because you use functions but not the same.
- Micro controller programming -> self taught. I got the idea to create my own smart clock one day. So I got on Ebay, Amazon and youtube and figured out all of the Sensors and micro controllers. I can build any smart device you can imagine. I really like Wemos D1 mini it has wifi and bluetooth built in. I also like STM32’s and almost any damn Micro controller. They fascinate me. So small, so powerful
- Linux -> Self taught and college. I use this all day everyday. I use Ubuntu and Mint on two computers. I mostly use Linux over Windows because adding programming software is much easier. Windows for business. Linux for programming
- Windows -> self taught. I started DOS in the 80’s at about 6 years old in school dir /w LOL I watched windows grow up and get dementia
- AI & machine learning -> I’ve been teaching myself about AI and Machine learning. I understand the fundamental basics. I have not picked anything like TensorFlow to learn yet. I learn what I need when I need it only. One thing I need to learn is how to read and write algorithms. I also need to learn statistics and probability, but I have books on all of that stuff already.
- User interface design -> Self taught. I own many books on this subject and practice it often. I should write some articles about this subject.
- Reputation System design and Gamification -> Colleges don’t teach this stuff. The current app I am building has a reputation system and uses gamification to direct the actions of users.
- Micro controller programming -> I program Arduino, STM32, Wemos etc and make smart objects for the hell of it. I know about various sensors and love researching them and coming up with ideas on how to use them. Like a radio clock with wifi and bluetooth, AM/FM and MP3 player. Which can connect to your phone or interact with Amazon Alexa or accept spoken commands. Which also has a built in weather station to tell you the temperature, humidity and your current elevation. Using the multiplexer is the hardest part of it, creating the addresses etc.