An Introduction

This blog is a compilation of various notes, suggestions, ideas, and other things that have come up as a result of my mother asking me programming questions. First, a bit of background:

I have been writing software professionally for oh, 15 years now. I started off in C and C++, but I quickly recovered and wrote quite a lot of Perl. Later, a co-worker of mine got me hooked on Ruby, but it wasn't for another few years before I figured out how to get paid to write in it. (Here's a free tip on how to get someone to let you use your favourite language : get someone to hire you for a job that doesn't care how it gets done, just that it does get done.)

That was in the days before Ruby on Rails 1.0, but eventually I discovered THAT, and well-- my life was changed. Web programming became fun again! Then I discovered Javascript as a real language and Holy Cow that was fun, too!

My mother, on the other hand, was one of the first female Cobol programmers, and then took a few decades off to raise children. After my father died, she decided she needed to learn Java to make a living, and so she has tried to do. In the process, she has earned a Master's degree in Computer Science (which makes me incredibly proud, as she was over 60 when she was awarded her degree), but as anyone who's got one knows, it is possible to do this while not always getting a strong background in the nitty-gritty business of creating software.

This blog, then, is a repository of bits and pieces of advice I've given over the years. I mostly intend it to serve as a place I can refer to from time to time if these questions come up again, but if they help out anyone else, then I'm even happier.