Launching A Social Media Platform

My Association is launching it first social platform through a vendor. Forums, Libraries, Listserv, etc. all being put togeather for our members. The problem is I am the only developer, so the comm department gives me content and I create the HTML pages on the actual site. Also our membership we have split into about 35 groups among committees and such, so anything I change design wise on 1 I then must repeat 34 times because there is no general CSS controls for these types of pages. On top of that the CSS controls I do have control over for the layout and color of the site is about 18 pages long and written by someone on the vendors Engineer team so it was a lot to track and learn how to move and resize things. But overall the site is coming togeather great and although its loads of work I am learning more and more every day

The .NET Blues

I have just attended my annual review. Among other future projects, one of the biggest ones will be helping in either rewriting or maintaining a new program that majority of my association credibility comes from. No pressure or anything...But it will be in VB.NET I believe which I am not that familiar with. So again, another learning tree class is in order for somewhere around October. Which is far as hell, so I will probably start teaching myself a lot earlier. I also need to pick up some C# because I have been drowning in C# pages every so often. To developers out there, my suggestion, dont specialize, learn and master as many programming languages as you can because the tech world is cosntantly changing and no matter what you think is popular today may be outdated next year.

Hell hath no fury like CSS

The company I work for is launching a social media platform(forums, community, feed, etc.). Now the vendor doing this ofcourse charges for changes outside of the default layout given to us. So we are trying to make the changes we want in-house and save some money. The problem is they only gave us access to their CSS file. CSS is not a bad language and is very easy to use and control but not when you have no idea where these different areas in the CSS file and relating back to the HTML pages on the site. On top of that the file is about 8-12 pages long. WooHoo right....well the way I worked around this huge issue is creating a local copy of the CSS file and also, copying the page source of one of the HTML pages. Then opening both in Dreamweaver, BAM, local version of the site. From here I make changes to the CSS and save it then preview the HTML page in firefox, noticing and comparing any changes. Repeat this process for about 2 days and I now have a pretty good understanding of the controls. A very tedious process but thus is the life of a programmer :-)

The Struggle of a Developer

I have recently gotten a change to talk to someone who is in close work relationship with developers. She had many many stories of how they make small mistakes that cause huge down time in staff work ability and even miscalculation with customers. These developers get fired on the spot and it is a scary thought. I am not yet in a job where my programming abilities determine my job status, but if/when I do, the pressure is insane. A simple mistake like a 0 instead of a 1, a  true instead of a false, a forgotten or unexpected error that was never handled. There are so many scenerios and possibilities that a programmer must be prepared for when writing code. My only suggestion for you out there is when you are done writing your code and you feel confident it works and has good error handling, give it to you dumbest, most tech illiterate friend to test and destroy. If they can understand it and use it without fault or error then you now have a 50/50 chance your client will be happy...

Mid-Year Review

So I have been working at this company for about 6 months now and all the directors are conducting their mid-year reviews. Since I will be out of town next week when they are due I had to write mine up early. Want to know my general accomplishments and goals? Ofcourse you do...

I have learned a lot about an AMS system called iMIS and all the backend lovelyness that goes with it. I have also sharpened my HTML/CSS language skill which editing the backend for the company website. I have also learned a lot from Crystal Reports from scratch which  I have decided is an extremely powerful database reporting tool. I have learned so much about servers and everything IT related. If anything this company has helped me learn enough to have an associated degree in IT haha. My goals are go basically keep this up, continue to learn and grow as a IT professional without losing sight of the fact that I am a developer. I will continue to take programming classes at learning tree and sharpen my programming skills any way I can. Well thats about it for that, have a good long Memorial Day weekend everyone.

Codecademy

I have been turned on to a sort of learning tutorial site called Codecademy. It is a very useful tool for any rising programmers. They have sections on Javascript, HTML, and CSS, and then using all three togeather. It is a very useful tool in either brushing up or just learning something new. I would suggest it for anyone who plans on web programming. Best of all it is free!

Learning Opportunities

So since I have started this IT position, the company I work for has put me through a couple Learning Tree courses. I have taken two SQL Server courses, one in queries using select statements and all that jazz. And another class with the transact side of things, the more automated side using store procedures and triggers. I have background already in MySQL which is slightly different from SQL but very similar which made the first course more of a refresher, but the second course I got to learn many new things I did not know about. I am moving onto .NET programming in July. As much as I hate school, it is nice to get away from the work place every so often ;-)