Tuesday, August 30, 2005
After some time it became a mess..
And it's Tuesday's afternoon.
Right now I realize of something wierd. Since the first time I went to the computer lab in University, back in 1996 and i discovered IRC, I didn't ever stop again my relation with computers. At first, as I'm very curious, I managed to screw up the software by deleting carefully selected files that seemed useless to me :) Well, after a while I discovered how stupid can ignorance make you.
I guess all this is very similar to my childhood habit of unassembling everything that had screws or could be opened... just to figure out how did it work. I remember many times i went to my grandfather's room asking if he had any old pocket watch for me to open.
Well, this obsession for knowing, for learning how the hell things work I guess that has me here today.
After surfing thousands of site i started learning how to build them up... some HTML, some image editing, someFTPing to the server and that´s it.
But i was still anxious, because i saw some websites that, if you started thinking, it was obviously impossible to edit infinite wepages that would show you every single option you've selected.
So I discovered dinamic interaction between the user and the server. And of course at last i found the Content Management Systems. These pieces of software are quite interesting becasue the technology behind is very simple and you can almost completely forget about the user interface design (that had to be heavily considered in my former attempts of learning about programming). I mean, you already have a screen and lots of predefined objects to place on it, like tables, fields, buttons, images, etc.
There's a website where you can find demos of the most popular CMSs out there:
http://www.opensourcecms.com
And the cool thing is that you needn't pay a penny for them. Most are GPL'ed.
OK. The thing is that the same as unscrewing a pocket watch I started reading the code with whic these systems were built. And of course i got fascinated and started learning how to modify code and replicate behaviour in my sites.
Now, that i finished University, I'm working as an independent consultant, setting up prebuilt applications, and recently developing them by myself.
This last point is what brought me to write today...
If you are a normal human, which I think I am, you can learn practically everything that human brain has ever discovered or developed in all our history over this planet.
But there are some things which, just by reading, are quite harder than others.
For example programming. This discipline, labour, science or however you want to call it, as to be learnt (or taught) by practice. There is hardly a way that you're brain will develop it's positronic paths without actually typing the instructions, running, debuging, running again, thinking, modifying, running, debuging, running succesfully. This process makes you skillful in solving problems, finding ways of implementing a solution. Which of course at first will be slow, redundant, but with time will turn into simple, fast, efficient and elegant pieces of engines.
Programming is fun stuff, but takes a whole lot of concentration.
That's it for today, I got tired.
See you soon,
TIto.
Right now I realize of something wierd. Since the first time I went to the computer lab in University, back in 1996 and i discovered IRC, I didn't ever stop again my relation with computers. At first, as I'm very curious, I managed to screw up the software by deleting carefully selected files that seemed useless to me :) Well, after a while I discovered how stupid can ignorance make you.
I guess all this is very similar to my childhood habit of unassembling everything that had screws or could be opened... just to figure out how did it work. I remember many times i went to my grandfather's room asking if he had any old pocket watch for me to open.
Well, this obsession for knowing, for learning how the hell things work I guess that has me here today.
After surfing thousands of site i started learning how to build them up... some HTML, some image editing, someFTPing to the server and that´s it.
But i was still anxious, because i saw some websites that, if you started thinking, it was obviously impossible to edit infinite wepages that would show you every single option you've selected.
So I discovered dinamic interaction between the user and the server. And of course at last i found the Content Management Systems. These pieces of software are quite interesting becasue the technology behind is very simple and you can almost completely forget about the user interface design (that had to be heavily considered in my former attempts of learning about programming). I mean, you already have a screen and lots of predefined objects to place on it, like tables, fields, buttons, images, etc.
There's a website where you can find demos of the most popular CMSs out there:
http://www.opensourcecms.com
And the cool thing is that you needn't pay a penny for them. Most are GPL'ed.
OK. The thing is that the same as unscrewing a pocket watch I started reading the code with whic these systems were built. And of course i got fascinated and started learning how to modify code and replicate behaviour in my sites.
Now, that i finished University, I'm working as an independent consultant, setting up prebuilt applications, and recently developing them by myself.
This last point is what brought me to write today...
If you are a normal human, which I think I am, you can learn practically everything that human brain has ever discovered or developed in all our history over this planet.
But there are some things which, just by reading, are quite harder than others.
For example programming. This discipline, labour, science or however you want to call it, as to be learnt (or taught) by practice. There is hardly a way that you're brain will develop it's positronic paths without actually typing the instructions, running, debuging, running again, thinking, modifying, running, debuging, running succesfully. This process makes you skillful in solving problems, finding ways of implementing a solution. Which of course at first will be slow, redundant, but with time will turn into simple, fast, efficient and elegant pieces of engines.
Programming is fun stuff, but takes a whole lot of concentration.
That's it for today, I got tired.
See you soon,
TIto.
