So I’ve taken the plunge back into programming.  I haven’t had the time I was hoping for, but I’ve made some progress. 

Over the last month I’ve dug into C# a bit.  Worked through some tutorials, built some basic little silly apps to continue learning.  Installed SQL Server (Express and full) to play with some database connectivity. 

The learning curve hasn’t been as steep as I was expecting.  I did some Access/VBA programming a couple years back and do have a programming background (BCIT grad!).  This is my first real foray into true object oriented programming.  It’s neat.  Of course, I’m not actually trying to design and build anything from scratch yet. 

I have this idea that’s been percolating in my head for the past few years and I’m seriously considering starting to build it.  I wouldn’t expect it to be THAT tough .. but the challenge is where to start.  It’s web-based, and would be well suited to all the fancy web 2.0 / AJAX type stuff. 

Of course, learning more about CSS (I know the basics) and ASP.NET is a requirement.  But do I need to learn dHTML?  AJAX?  Does it really matter?  I’m sure hoping I can take a layered approach – start with the basics and improve as I go along.

At the very least, my bookshelf is getting full again!

This posting has become more much personal than my normal posts, but consider it an introduction into a new section of the blog – Software development.

I love working with people and solving problems.  While I do enjoy what I do, much of it effectively is user support.  Unfortunately, the problems we run into are rarely challenging enough to really excite me.  I’ve been doing technology support for well over a decade and it’s getting pretty rare that we find a new problem for me.  Granted, I did have one fun one yesterday …

Luther now does much of the daily support for our company.  He loves getting his hands dirty and working through the issues that always seem to happen.

One of the things I have been enjoying is diving into Sharepoint Services.  I’ve done several rollouts now, and am finding it to be a fairly capable technology (although somewhat limited without Sharepoint Designer or custom development work). 

With one of my other projects, QCDocs, I’m finding an ongoing feeling of “I can do that” when I look at our product.  To make things more interesting, I’m also seeing the interesting convergences between our product and SharePoint Services. 

One evening, while lamenting about being somewhat bored, Laura pointed out how much fun I had a couple years ago, when I was digging away at an Access development project for yet another one of my projects. 

Well duh.  Sometimes I’m not too bright and need to be smacked over the head.  I spent my teenage years as a software developer.  I went to BCIT for software development.  I was actually quite a GOOD little coder.

Back into the fray!

Last week I downloaded Microsoft Visual Studio Express 2005 (C#) , a book from MS Press and started to dive in.  Not too surprizing – C# isn’t hard to pickup.  Through the years, I’ve programmed in way too many languages, including Pascal, C, C++ (badly), LISP (WOO Parenthesis!), VB/VBA and others.  I immediately found I could read and understand most of the sample code they gave me.

Microsoft nicely provides a bunch of tutorial videos and the like online to help you get started too.  So far, they’re pretty simple – I AM a geek afterall.  To prove I’m a geek, I’ve been spending my cardio time (on my exercise bike) watching video after video. 

What projects to tackle, though?  I have too many in mind to list.  I’ll do my best to let you know where I go.