I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
A lot of my programming has been based on the needs at work.
- I started VBA in Excel to skim through a massive text file from the mainframe to grab the total number on the very end.
- I learned VB script and SQL to move data from mainframe to SQL Server. Then they started teaching me Pick Basic (a Unidata flavor).
- When I needed to get data from the data warehouse to our Sales reps so I learned ASP (classic).
With the exception of the Unidata above, and Basic and Pascal in High School ('89), the above list was all self-taught while at work.
Tough thing was I didn't know if I learned it right, or wrong until I started taking classes and found advice given from the IT department was the same as what the class said NOT to do.
I did eventually, with a different company, get training on ASP.NET and VB.NET as well as SQL Server.
Meanwhile, at home I was teaching myself Linux, PHP and C#.
From my Linux and PHP experience from home I was tasked to update the company Drupal site from 5 to 7. Not only did I have to learn what Drupal was and how CMSs work, I had to learn to manage the FreeBSD it was on, based on my Linux experience from home.
It took me about 14 months, or as my boss likes to point out "3 Fiscal Years" (it was the last month of one FY, one FY and one month into the 3rd FY.)
The funny thing is that it is the technology I learn on my own (ASP, Linux, PHP) that has lead me to opportunities.
I use Windows at work, and I don't have much choice in that.
At home I have a mix of Windows and Linux systems. I have 2 laptops and one of the laptops has 2 hard drives; a Linux and a Windows one.
I would probably be more single-OS (Linux) focused if I could curtail my distro- and desktop-hopping.
I think the best situation for me would be if I got a new Linux computer (System76?) with enough horsepower to install Windows on it (for those few times) and enough horsepower to play my couple of games (via WINE).