With Gregg

Welcome to the first post of what I hope to be a long long series of posts that will document what I'm learning. You're welcome to learn with me if you're so inclined or you can just move along if not. I take no offense.

I decided to start this process because I am entering what I'm going to refer to as the second half of my life now and it's time I figure out what the hell that's going to entail. Currently I work as a developer manager at a company that makes web sites. I personally have not programmed a website in over 3 years and am very far behind in terms of exactly how the latest and greatest technology works - especially as it applies to web development. I know that's what's supposed to happen as you get older and take on management roles, but it doesn't have to I guess.

To that end I have been thinking a lot about everything I want to better understand. I have never really lost my thirst for knowledge, just have been losing the time and motivation to learn. I'm really really good at starting things and equally good at not finishing them.

I'll probably come come back and add more to this page later - see what I mean about finishing - but I will for now point out the types of things I am hoping to cover in this blog.

While I know a little bit (and in some cases more than a little bit) about all of this, I want to...

• Explain what CMS I chose to use here and why. Seems like an interesting thought experiment, especially given what I do for a living.
• Teach myself what is being covered in an undergraduate computer science curriculum. I was a chemistry major in college and graduate school and minored in maths and physics, and never actually studied computer science in school.
• Teach myself about cloud computing - mostly Azure, but also AWS and Google Cloud Platform. I'm not going to forget about smaller offerings as well. This is so relevant to where everything is headed.
• Teach myself about programming languages - mostly C#, Php, Go, Python, and maybe Ruby. At work I oversee developers who use C# and ASP.NET. In my personal life, I really like what's going on with frameworks like Laravel.
• Get certified in a number of relevant certifications. I am certainly going to pursue a Microsoft MCSD: App Builder certification, but there will be others.
• Much much more...

I guess that's all for now. Be sure to check back later.