Where has your experience come from?

I'm just curious where everyone has picked up thier web design experience from. I've taught myself 99% of what I know just from forums, how-to sites andESPECIALLY code examples. I started with AOL 4.0 in 1998 and took one computer class at school (intro to excel and word). A year laterIstarted playing with MSAccess (the program we didn't learn because HS teachers didn'tunderstand it) and oh the possibilities... I could actually sort my baseball cards by Donruss or Topps! I joined the Air Force in 2003 and was asked to build a website for my church, that's when I found asp and I've been busy ever since. I have4projects going right now, one of them is absolutely HUGE, buteach of them I do for free aside from my day job of Air Traffic Control. I like doing this for a lot of reasons, but what I like most I think is the challenge - like coming up with the code I thought was impossibletwo days ago. I've never recieved a dime for any computer work, but I'm thinking that may change after I'm out of the military. I'm just curious how you all have made it to where you're at. Thanks

JB

 

I learned on the job as well, but found some great .Net classes at www.learnvisualstudio.net. Some awesome short videos on a multitude of .net topics.

 

LearnVisualStudio.Net is where I also got the most of my .Net experience. It provided an excellent foundation for more learning through book reading and other web sites. All other experience has just been through reading and picking up tips from other developers.


I would really like to take a formal course and get certified, however time and money has so far prevented me from doing so.

 

I am a consultant. I tried .net while still in beta. then i got back to it when a client required to do some programming in it.


The way I like to learn new things about it is revieing codeproject articles. fantastic site

 

That's right , bruce!


I started off learning how to use VS.Net 2003 toauthor Win App / ASP.Net. in VB.Net a year ago at a reputable polytech institution (hehe... ITT Tech could be their competitor for students down the states) in Canada, called BCIT.


By then, programming got myselfextremely interestedin how to make computers work for you - running custom software.


On the job, I can say I pretty much put everything that I know so far into practice. (however, I wasn't paid well... as a IT pro)





Anyways, good luck , dude!


ps. i heard that it's pretty tough to stay on top of everything there in the US. Air Force!




J. L.
Technical Support/IT Admin/MIS Developer
Maxtop Enterprises Inc.
http://www.maxtop.ca</CODE>

Post Edited (J.Bey) : 5/3/2006 8:11:02 PM GMT

 

I wrote my first web page for Mosaic, then had several years were I didn't have access to a computer. When I was going through college I worked on grant projects building web appllications, which is where I started getting my ASP experience. I've answered something like 4000+ questions on ASP at Tek-Tips.com and I think that is what allowed me to master ASP. If I didn't know the answer I would research it, especially if it was something interesting. I've rewritten my own website something like 8 times, each time paring down the code to a smaller and smaller footprint.
ASP.Net experience is company driven, I don't use it outside of my everyday job. I have a lot of problems with the architectural decisions that were made with it and there are several pieces that just feel like they were hastily constructed. So even though I can occasionally do things faster, the frustration of hitting a brick wall where there shouldn't be one, or trying to build around an inconsistency inherent in the platform is too much for me, when I can visualize exacty how to do the same thing in several other languages.
PHP experience is being driven because there are things tat are missing from Classic ASP that I didn't want to build with ASP.Net. There are a lot of things I like about PHP, even having come to it late in the game. It will never beat my love for the absolute simplicity of ASP 3.0, but it's becoming one of my hobby languages. I recently built a package for dynamic signatures completely in PHP and, while I did find two item that didn't work as expected, thats still a lot fewer than I find in ASP.Net.

Now Graphic Design, that would be the skill I don't have

These days the only contracts I take (work as a fulltime systems developer) are last minute small emergency projects for a consultant friend. Basically he gives me something thats in his way, i knock it out, I get free Scotch. I couldn't think of a better way to use those skills