SiteCrafting Blah Blah Blog
Jan. 16, 2007 at 11:23am
Diary of a Developing Developer
Learning by Doing
I never had any idea how complicated, confusing, and involved the development of web sites and web-based applications can truly be. When I was younger, every once in a while I would look at a web page and click the "view source" option and think, "Wow, that really doesn't look too difficult to learn."
Little did I know there is so much more behind the code than what is seen in that one snapshot of HTML.
Working for SiteCrafting has really been a great experience and has given me the chance to work in an area I've always been interested in and am starting to enjoy more every day. On-the-job training, however, can be both the easiest and hardest way to learning something that's very involved and complicated. It's easy because I have a wealth of knowledge sitting all around me at work that can answer my questions and give me one-on-one assistance when I get stuck. I never dreamed of getting a job where I can have 9 teachers to 1 student when usually the ratio is turned around with something like 1 teacher to 25 students or more. The hard thing is that I'm starting out by looking at, what to me are, very complicated applications and involved coding and working back towards the basics instead of starting with the basics and working towards more difficult applications. Although I've read through helpful tutorials for HTML, CSS, and PHP, that only goes so far. Actually coding, testing, finding it wrong, getting frustrated, re-doing, and having things re-explained is where the actual learning takes place. Fortunately, I am enjoying ( mostly :) ) every minute of it.
Seeing what's involved in the development of web applications SiteCrafting produces has certainly given me a new appreciation for the expertise, hard work, and effort put into clients and their projects. I am certainly eager to keep learning as I get more and more involved in development work.
Posted in Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends, Software Engineering by Reena Hensley
Comments (2)
Just don't listen to anything Mike Ash tells you, and you'll go far! ;)
1 | Left by Bernie Zimmermann | Jan. 16, 2007 at 4:04pm
Mike says:
Come on Bernie, I'm not that bad ;) Luckily, we have a number of great developers here that not only can code me under the table, but they're good teachers as well. So Reena can (and sometimes does) ignore me and still have plenty of others to help out.
2 | Jan. 17, 2007 at 11:37am