culann.com

Where’s Ben?

So, it may have been obvious that I’ve been relatively absent from this blog for the last several weeks (and some time before that, actually). I’ve got an excuse! Really, I do! I got married on Saturday, and up until the day itself had been workin’ on stuff for the rehearsal and ceremony. (You may ask why I’m posting now, when most normal grooms would be on the honeymoon - well, Lacie and I are working this week before taking off for two weeks in Italy this Saturday. Yay!)

Beyond that, however, I’ve been splitting my computer time between a couple of different projects. Most of my blogging energy has gone towards my running blog, through which I’ve discovered some really interesting things about community on the web. Work, of course, has been a relatively constant time sink, but beyond that I’ve been focusing on two learning projects: PHP 5 and C#.

I spent a few weeks at the beginning of August taking a look at the brand-spakin’ new release of PHP 5, and I have to say I was impressed. It was easy to work with, quick to develop with, and (thank goodness) finally had access modifiers for class members. I worked up a prototype for a web app in it (that I’m still looking for a home for - anyone know of a good host who has PHP 5 installed?), and all in all was pretty happy.

And then, I turned to C#. I’ve been meaning to dive into .NET for a couple of years now, given that I’ve been a classic ASP developer since I was hired at Nextel back in 2000. I kept putting it off, though, when I saw how lousy the generated HTML was for server controls, and when the pressure of quick-delivery projects stayed fairly constant. This month, however, that pressure has eased a bit, so I decided to just take a look at the platform to see what it could do. At the same time, I was itching to put into practice some agile methods (test-driven development, etc.), so a couple of weeks ago I buckled down and started reading and experimenting.

Now, I’m hooked. I’m still learning more daily (of course), but I’m at the point where I know enough to be dangerous and I want to use these technologies and processes for as many projects as possible. Developing is fun, again - something that it hasn’t been very much of for a while now. As I’m working out the intricacies of building an MVC app without relying on the (still crap) ASP.NET server control system, I’m just really enjoying myself.

So basically, I’ve been too head-down in coding and books to post much here; one Lacie and I get back from the honeymoon (mmmm, honeymoon), I expect to resume a more regular schedule. Given my renewed enthusiasm for the internals of development, I also anticipate that the rejuvenated culann.com will have a more noticeable coding presence - the technical content won’t just be web and design stuff any more. Feel free to check back in a few weeks - hopefully what’s coming won’t disappoint!