System.out.println(”Hello World”);
Greeting everyone. I would like to tell all of you a little bit about myself, and what this blog is about. For a while, I have been wanting to set up a blog, and now I finally got around to it.
First off, my name is Gary Crabtree, and I am currently a 22 year old college student at the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. I am a computer science - software engineering major, and a psychology minor. This is the first place I ever learned any type of programming, and it all started with Java for me (hence the terribly tacky title). I have had a small taste of many languages, and design patterns, and that conglomerate of things that a computer science department will teach, but the most significant thing that has had an influence for me, did not actually come from class itself.
At first, I was slightly turned off to programming as it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be at all. Having never touched any code, with the exception of simple HTML, before college, going straight into the computer science department was a significant life choice for me. I had been good at the arts side of things. I was in choir, band, and theater, both musical and non musical, but I felt that why I enjoyed those things was because they were an escape for me from the “real world”. If I was going to go into any of those as a career, I think it would have lost its meaning to me. So, I figured I will always be able to find community theater, and choirs/bands wherever I go, and I decided to keep it a significant part of my life, but to pursue other endeavors.
I swayed my other options, and they came down to computer science, and psychology. So, I decided to go with computer science as a main focus as I felt that it would give me the best variety of options in careers after a degree with it. So, I proceeded to take classes at the university, homework outside of classes, and spending the rest of my time leisurely for a few years until one day, things changed.
I got a job for the university doing web development. I had done a bit of HTML as mentioned, and some simple things from classes as well, so I figured it would be a great way to earn some money as I was in need of some greatly. So, in the summer of 2007, I started said job doing simple static design work. By the end of the summer however, I had started expressing interest in learning the application side of web design as well, and I proceeded to let me bosses know that if possible, I would like to move in that direction. So, towards the end of that summer, I started training in something that would greatly influence the rest of my college career, and undoubtedly, my life. What I speak of, is Ruby on Rails.
Once I started it, I didn’t understand why everyone advocated so strongly for it; it took me a good chunk of time before I would either. I didn’t get to fully do Rails work until almost that following summer due to other static projects that came up, and then I got to take another look at it. This time, I started to slowly see what was cool about it after a year of working with languages such as C/C++, Scheme, and Prolog in my classes. Slowly, over this previous year, I have gotten to spend a lot more time working with it, and it is leading me to stay with it in the future. Although I still have a lot to learn about it, I plan to continue working with it professionally when out of school as well.
I feel that I have gotten to tell you all about my story, and where I am coming from as well. This blog will be where I will talk about what I learn both with Rails, and other technologies either through school, work, or anywhere else.