To code or not to code. That is the question...

Programming. A subject near and dear to me. It's been a touch and go for me ever since my first programming class back in my junior year of high school (1999-2000 for those keeping count). I've always had a love/hate relationship with the ones and zeros. Mostly because of my overactive personality, programming couldn't hold my attention longer than the two seconds it did when I saw my handy work in action. I've more recently been able to get over this, but sometimes it comes back. Kind of like a manic depressive person.

I've most recently gotten back into programming in the last year after I went to a job recruiter who told me that I needed to add some basic programming skills to my resume. The websites they recommended I had never heard of, but boy, I sure have never forgotten, Codecademy and Git. Well, to be honest, I had heard of Git before but I had never used it.

Codecademy is quite literally, the best programming training website I've ever come across. It does a really good job rivaling W3schools for teaching the languages most used for web development and web app development. The most popular programming languages are on there, like Python, Ruby, CSS, HTML, and javascript. Even PHP is on there, which really surprises me, because it wasn't there when I first signed up. A couple other training courses that they offer are what I'm looking at right now, which is Jquery and an advanced website building course.

The other program I was told to learn was Git. Git is a program available on Linux, Windows and Mac used for backing up programs you are working on and version control(ie. if you make a mistake, you can go back to a previous version of your program that was working the way you wanted it to.) There are a couple of websites associated with Git on the internet that are really useful if you are programming in multiple places, like at home, at work or at school. The ones that are wideley used in the industry is Github. My personal choice is Bitbucket. You can have your programs completely private at Bitbucket, but not at Github unless you buy a subscription. I would use Bitbucket for development, but move it to Github if you need to show it off.

The only piece of advice I can give from going through this situation is to get Vmware player and make an Ubuntu Linux virtual machine, and make a backup of it after you do your first update. Then use a new copy of it to test out the different programs for programming, there are different frameworks, which I will get into another day, and different types of webservers and programs to run your website. if you make a mistake, shutdown the virtual machine, and then copy your backup and you have a new clean version to start over from scratch.

Below are some links to the websites I talked about earlier. Hope I could inspire somebody else.

http://www.codecademy.com/
http://www.w3schools.com/

https://github.com/
https://bitbucket.org/

A Welcome Back Q and A

Don't you ever wonder what it was like if Gollum were to have an interview with Smeagol? Well, worry no longer good friend.



A: Hi! How's it going?

B: Not too bad

A: Been awhile hasn't it? What have you been up to?

B: Ummm... Not to much. Just work.

A: Work? Really? is that all?

B: Yeahhh.....Not really.

A: What else have you been up to?

B: Just a few things. studying on Codecademy. Started a Facebook craft beer group, got hooked on Minecraft, traveling locally. You know, Those type of things.

A: Wow! that's alot! So, uh, are you going to be back on blogger now?

B: Yeah. I think so. Hopefully. Well, to tell the truth, I don't have much that I'm doing in between all of those different things. So, I should be doing something a bit more productive with my life.You can't just screw around with your life. Even more so when you reach my age.

A:So what can we expect from your future posts?

B: Well, I would like to say a little of this and a little of that, but that is a bit boring, ya know? I think I want to start sharing some of what's actually going on in my life. Kind of like the times I go full retard.

A: Don't they say you wont win the big one if you go full retard?

B: Yeah. But I think I was absent that day at school. I do plenty of stupid things. I also like to say stupid things as well. Well, at least, I love to say things on my mind that I shouldn't. Like, when I'm at work. Maybe, I can share a bit more of my demented mind. I'll just try not to bore ya with my bitching. Oh, I lurve to bitch, by the way. Everybody has something they are good at, and bitching is my number one skill.

A: Well, I bid you good luck and good evening, sir.

B: Thanks for talking with me. You too.