CodingItWrong

The idea for this web site started because I couldn’t figure out how to summarize myself. My previous web site and my social network "about" texts were centered around the way I was presenting myself professionally as a technologist—but those things shift over time. And I’m kind of at the point in my life where I defy easy summarization, even to myself.

For some reason it occurred to me "what if I just started writing things on a web page?" It occurred to me that I could link between sections of the page to link back and forth between related things.

A few interesting things fall out of this. Since I don’t know yet how I want to present the info, I can just add the content now and style it later. This is a chance to learn some more advanced CSS that allow me to change the presentation significantly without needing to change the markup. Since the markup will be easy to edit directly, and since it will be one page without the need for repeated headers, there isn’t a need to write in Markdown. And this content-first approach means the page should work well on low-power devices and even the vintage computers I collect.

Since the coming of Bootstrap I’ve wanted to have a web site that looked different, but I never had a reason to make it look different. Now I do: it’s not structured like a typical web site. And since the early days of the web I’ve wanted to take advantage of hypermedia but haven’t usually had a reason to do so.

Professionally I currently build frontends in React and React Native. For side projects I do the same, as well as frontends in UIKit and web service APIs in Ruby on Rails.

In the past as a kid I cut my teeth on programming in HyperCard, Macromedia Director, and Perl. Professionally I got my start in Java and PHP. Through the Ruby community, learning about SmallTalk has influenced my interest in user-modifiable software

Technology has been my major interest since I was small: somewhere my parents have a photo of me at 2 years old sitting in front of a computer. I was a toddler when GUIs came to the mass market (the Macintosh), in middle school when the World Wide Web made it to homes, and graduated college once the dot-com crash had settled!

Growing up on the early Macintosh influenced my views of technology. I loved the fact that the GUI made it accessible for me as a kid. HyperCard (preinstalled on all Macs) gave me a taste of being able to create software of my own--and since lower-level programming required paid tooling and was challenging to do, my interests stayed at the HyperCard level. And since Mac hardware ranges from "completely unable to self-service" to "challenging to self-service", my interest stayed on the side of software.

When the web came out, it was a way to create web sites (and, later, interactive web apps via `cgi-bin` and Perl) accessible anywhere in the world for free. The web also got me interested in freedom of information.

Open-source was around at the start of the web's proliferation with Apache, Perl, Linux, and eventually Mozilla, and as a kid with no money I was excited about the accessibility of this software.

As a result of these influences, I find myself with somewhat contradictory interests when it comes to technology. I love that anyone can create software on the web for the price of hosting, but I also love the user experience and integration of the Apple platform. I benefit from open source and contribute to it, but I also use paid apps when they're a much better fit for my use case. I build hobby apps with Apple's UIKit or React Native so I can run them on my iPhone with the best UX, but I worry about platform lock-in.