With few exceptions, Web sites today are not built on a no-frills text editor using only static HTML code. Most sites today use a minimum of four different technologies. A relatively simple page will likely use HTML for static markup, inline (such as ASP or PHP) or code-behind (ASP.NET) dynamic code, CSS for consistent styles, and JavaScript for dialog box popups. Given the multitude of technologies that are used to build even a single dynamic data-driven Web page, it’s impossible to know it all.
Though I’ve been writing programs since before most people had even heard of email, I still must frequently use Google (or my new favorite search engine, Duck Duck Go) to look up functions, formatted connection strings, .NET namespaces, SQL stored procedures, and the like.
Most of the time, if I can properly articulate what coding problem I’m trying to solve, a few minutes of searching will likely result in finding the code that will fix it. In many cases, if I’m having a problem, it’s very likely that others have had it before, and that at least one of them posted the solution somewhere.
For those difficult times that I have had to either conjure up the code on my own or to use multiple other sources to build a solution that worked for me, I created this blog. I hope to shed light on questions that were (at least to me) very perplexing, but for which I now have answers.
Welcome to my blog, and happy coding!
P.S.:
While I got my start on an Apple, and just recently bought my first Mac, the bulk of my professional work is using Windows-based technologies. For my IDE, I generally use Visual Studio 2010. Most of my applications are ASP.NET using VB, though I am doing all new development in C# where possible. SQL Server 2008 is my DBMS of choice, though I do get to dabble in Oracle Database programming from time to time. With any luck, I’ll get a chance to post some Cocoa / Objective-C code before the end of the year! 😀