In looking through my older posts, I realized that I wrote my first post, Guide for the Perplexed, six years ago yesterday.
I don’t have as much time to write as much as did during the first couple of years of this blog; I generally write two posts per month now. Even so, I hope that these posts continue to do what I originally intended when I started writing them back in 2012 – both to make available useful information that is not easily found in one place, and by combining different techniques to synthesize processes that create more value than the sums of their parts.
I have received many comments and suggestions over the years, and I have found almost all of them to be not only constructive in nature, but that they have also helped correct things about which I was mistaken and also to help provide clarity when my explanation was not as clear as it could have been. Thanks for these, and keep the comments coming – they are welcome!
The things that have changed the most are the technologies that I’ve used. When I started, I primarily wrote about ASP.NET (mostly VB.NET, with some C# .NET), and SQL Server. Though I still write about SQL Server often, I find that I tend to work with other front-end technologies more often than ASP.NET now – especially JavaScript with or without jQuery.
I am planning on getting involved with more open-source technology where possible – R seems to be a good choice. Much like Python and jQuery, I think it will be more widely used in the coming years.
Thanks for reading!