Welcome to blog

I always used to think I wanted to blog over the years, but then I would get done designing and even get some site up and then life would just happen and I’d leave thing hanging too long. I think in retrospect I had more fun messing around with building blogs than I did actually blogging, It’s highly likely I may well enjoy web development more than I did writing a blog… so third time lucky.

I thought a blog would be a good way to document my progress of continual learning, as well as network and continue to learn more about coding/programming/etc. So, by way of introduction, here’s a bit about me, as told through my pre-twenties coding experience:

• Age 10: I got a Sinclair ZX81 and started to write BASIC on it. I often think I was lucky as back then we didn’t have GUIs and everything had to be done through the command line.

• Age 13: Things got really amazing as with my new Spectrum I had colour and sound too!

• Age 15: Now I was cooking on gas, a BBC Model B and 2 games: Elite and Revs

• Age 17: Left school with not many GCSEs (I was the class clown and other than computer studies, maths and physics no other subject (academic that is) interested me).

• Age 18: Started an apprenticeship in Telecommunications, eventually leading to coding on Tandem Mainframes.

From my mid twenties, I hopped around several things including being an electrician, a psy trance DJ, a casino croupier and even a postman. I haven’t yet been Father Christmas though the hours do suit.

I’m 50 years old now, and when I was in my early 30’s I learnt to code in the hopes of becoming a web developer. I took myself off to the UEA (University of East Anglia) and managed to get myself onto a computer science degree. Not long after I finished university and failed miserably at running my first web dev business (aka learning a lot). Things really changed for teh better with me when I met an inspirational boss called Kevin Keable. He gave me my first break at a company called Oilennium that built oil and gas eLearning products all run from their Learning Management System which I cut my coding chops on. This taught me how important it is to get a good boss as unbeknown to me at the time I was picking up some business habits that would pay dividends (literally) later.

I’ve enjoyed my career thus far, I’m currently a senior manager at PwC though feeling the time for a change. The landscape will soon change from Head of Software Development and go to what I love the most again: Full Stack web dev, though this time mainly doing the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express.js, React.js, Node.js) for a firm that has a suite of snazzy geospatial products.

So blog wise this is the beginning of my journey. I’m excited for all I will learn in the coming months, and I hope I actually keep this blog up like I’m planning to!