The Constant Pursuit
It’s no secret to those who know me that I haven’t been the most career oriented web-hacker in the past. I’ve lived a “permanent vacation” style of life over the years spending large amounts of time snowboarding and wakeboarding by day and coding by night. So, just before New Year’s Day 2007 I moved into my cousin’s San Francisco guest room determined to finally get serious about my craft and career. It was a tough year in which I had many struggles, unexpected set-backs, tight pockets, and much to learn in order to compete in the local market.
Web Technologies I Learned to Use in ‘07
If you’re not going forward you’re moving backwards in this industry. After taking some steps forward in late 2005, ’06 brought huge growth in my snowboarding skills and little progress in my development prowess. Looking back on the year that was 2007, however, I’ve grown exponentially as a developer. Here are some of the new technologies I’ve become proficient using over the year:
- Flash Video and FFmpeg
2006 was truly the year that made Flash Video hotter than hot. In early 2007, while consulting for The Learning Annex, I was asked to develop a video learning site. I have had the chance to work with Flash Video Controller design and FFmpeg transcoding several times since. - Subversion (SVN) and Concurrent Versions System (CVS)
As I began development of my open source content management system (coming soon) it became immediately apparent that I needed to employ version control on my server. Since then, being able to roll back changes, replace accidentally deleted files, and checkout working copies to my local machine has been invaluable. Later this fall I had the chance to put what I learned using SVN to use at a stealth-mode start-up which uses CVS. - Apache mod_rewrite
Another addition brought about this year by my custom CMS development. Using mod_rewrite turns ugly URLs, like domain.com/index.php?article=99&ugly=yes, into readable ones, like domain.com/99/yes/. - jQuery JavaScript Framework
The latest and perhaps most significant addition to my skill-set was jQuery. After using it in minor problem-solving roles as a consultant with The NY Daily News and on my own site I had the opportunity to use jQuery full-time for the last couple months of the year. Today, I hand-code jQuery DOM interaction on a weekly basis and have even begun writing jQuery tutorials. - Others…
Some of the other technologies I began using in 2007 include: MVC, Template Toolkit, Microformats, Prototype.js, WiTango, API interaction, and more.
