Adventures In Coding Land

Adventures in coding. I’ve always known how to code. Ever since I “acquired” my very first mac running Mac OS 9 and Illustrator 14 among others I taught myself at an early age I also taught myself HTML. Of course, back then harkens back to the days before CSS and the copious use of iFrames *shudder*. Increasingly, I’ve noticed that employers have started to require some level of HTML/CSS in their requirements for jobs and even more so some even PHP and JavaScript *double suddder*. When did web design and graphic design start to converge? Even though I taught myself JavaScript and can make my way through PHP in order to read the very words you’re seeing at this moment. It’s not that I consider myself a crotchety old designer– I built this site using a CMS (WordPress) and styled and got it working through JavaScript.

Lately I’ve been taking online courses for JavaScript and I noticed something: I started to have that same “tetris effect” (look it up it’s a real thing) I do when I’m knee deep into a project where my sleep is inhabited with thoughts of constant problem solving. Sometimes I’ve even solved complex problems that way. I always told in school: “most people are better at design, some are better at development, but never both.” Well, unfortunately, the times they are a-changing to borrow from Dylan and like a surgeon being expected to know how to tailor a well-made suit, a designer is now expected to develop.

Here’s what I hope for 2017:
Finishing up unfinished projects (huzzuh!)
Updating my stale portfolio from 2016
Starting to learn some compiler based programming (C++ or more likely Objective C so I can start programming in Swift)
Start developing my own iOS apps.