phato.blog

Well, I intended to write this post just about editors I have been using or had used before. But it went more like my whole skill, so I changed the topic /facepalm.

Speaking about editors, a wand of developers. I have use several of them since I began my job as a coder. Some are complex IDE, some are simple text editors. Let’s take some years back.

TL;DR

Skills: HTML, CSS + SASS, ASP.net, PHP, JS + CS, Node, RoR.
Editors: Netbeans, VS2008-12, Sublime, Vim.

PS. For those who might wonder wtf these section headers are, I try to map my lifetime with my favourite childhood card game ;)

The Dark

I didn’t code anything when I was in highschool. I didn’t understand coding at all. There was a computer class by then assigned me some Pascal homework (I think It was Pascal .. can’t really remember) and some very basic HTML without any CSS.

Before I chose my major as Computer Science I was confusing between an archtect, an engineer, even a dentist. That time I was playing a MMORPG game and I was introduced a botting system (that was evil .. I’m sorry). I started configure some script and loved it. So I chose this CS major. Until this day, I know by myself I didn’t make a wrong choice ;)

Ice Age

Ahh once a CS freshies. In the first year there was a programming class coding some C basics using LCC-win32 and I think that was my first IDE. I didn’t understand anything, syntax ? compiling ? int void main() ? Everything seemed to be too scary.

The next language was Java using Netbeans 5 or 6 I guess, first met with OOP. Even I could perform in the exam quite well, I still didn’t really understand what programming is.

Coldsnap

Later years in CS there was a Computer System class and I had a chance to write some Assembly scripts, but I totally forget the tools I used. Same as tools for OS, AI, Logic and Functional Programming classes, I remember once I wrote Haskell and Lisp, but don’t know how. Netbeans was still there used to write Java applets in Computer Graphics class.

I did my senior project in Computer Vision field using Matlab. That was really weird for me right now, as a Web Developer. Since then I havn’t had a chance to work in this field anymore, and I’m happy with that.

Tempest

I was graduated! But sadly I couldn’t write any solid usable program. So I applied for a doctoral scholarship. (Un?)fortunately I was rejected and become lost. At that time my friend @chakrit and some others were working at the startup company. Thus he invited me to join.

I was taught to write some basic frontend before, so I became a frontend guy at the company.

My life with web development has begun by then.

.. And also my relationship with M$ Visual Studio, 2008 by that time.

Stronghold

At the time being, grid-based CSS frameworks were becoming polular. I studied Blueprint and tried to understand the idea. And based on that, I created my very first framework, the Draftsman’s grid. I have learnt most of my skills from Nettuts, David Walsh, Chris Coyier and other blogs as well.

Apart from ASP.net MVC (C#) (beta or 1) projects, which were company’s cores, I also responsibled in some PHP projects. I used CodeIgniter in Netbeans for PHP and it worked great, though quite slow but acceptable.

Saga

After a year I left my first company and joined a bigger one, much bigger. I was still a frontend guy but this time the UI team I was in use ASP.net WebForm.

Couple of months passed and the company upgraded VS from 2008 to 2010. Seriously, I had hard times with the IDE since the solution was very huge and complex, and my machine got only 2Gb RAM. VS2010 usually hangs up and crashed when I started multitasking. Things got slightly better when boosted up to 4Gb (whlist WinXP could only use 3.xGb) but sometimes with 3+ times hang-in-a-row I just want to throw something.

Meanwhile I became interested in JavaScript much more. I had been written some jQuery since first company. But in the project it used Prototype.js, some RC or beta version. I upgraded it to 1.7.x and learnt some lessons along the way. I found out that, for me, many JS fundamental were hard to understand and remember, so I started blogging about them.

Blogging has become really helpful for me since then.

Destiny

I decided to bought myself my first Macbook. The reason was because I had been reading articles about JavaScript and discovered Node.js. I really wanted to try them out. At when I was diciding to buy it turned out my sister needed a laptop for her homework, so I gave her my old one and bought the beloved Macbook. And began to fall in love with Unix.

After Node.js I wanted to try our more things. What is NoSQL ? Just try it, MongoDB, CouchDB. CoffeeScript ? Sounds nice, try it. I wrote some simple Django and Ruby on Rails projects. At that time I heard about a company hiring a Rails guy, I was interested, and got myself deeper in Rails.

Gah I totally forget about Editors. One stupid reason for me to but a Mac is I wanted to use TextMate. I tried it trial, nice, and swtich to Coda, hmm quite well too. But I don’t want to pay for a license. Then there was Sublime 2, which I thought its package management is really awesome. So it became my main editor in OSX.

Invasion

Three years with ASP.net C#, I decided to leave it. I joined the Rails company and became much more serious about Rails, and the web technologies.

So much things to learn everyday, Heroku is my hosting choice also with self-managed VPS on DigitalOcean. CI service by TravisCI, special thanks for deploying this blog!

I have become more familiar and prefer Git and Version Control system (I also prefer GUI based with SourceTree. SVN is also fine, if I have to. I use BitBucket for private projects, GitHub for open sources, and Unfuddle for SVN.

Since I have a good feeling with console using iTerm2, one crazy day I forced myself to drop Sublime and began using Vim. I want to use it for a long time but I couldn’t, always fell asleep when reading tutorials. This time I tried to use it in a daily processes. With a help from my genius friend @chakrit I slowly get used to it more and more. Now I even have my own dotfiles. I’m very happy that I’m happy with Vim.

Planeshift

For now Rails is my first weapon of choice, follow by Node.js, PHP, and still ASP.net MVC I guess. Many should come by and I’m still happy with this wab development thingy eveyday. It’s good to recall old memories and take a look back what I have done in this career path. And I have a thought with myself that I’ll keep going, higher and higher everyday.

The sky is a limit, developers.