Recovering Lost Passions – Web Development

I forgot how much fun it is to code

When I started working as a web developer, way back in 1997-98, during the time of animated gopher GIFs and loud color combinations on web pages, I found that I loved HTML and coding. When I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted, I spent hours slicing up images and creating complicated tables to make interfaces that didn’t look boring and vanilla.

It helped when I started learning CSS, and I found that many of the things I was doing with HTML and JavaScript could much more easily be done with a little cascading magic.

I loved everything about coding, even sitting for hours staring at long files and finding bugs. I was somewhat of a savant when it came to looking at code, even if I was staring at some of the worst-formatted garbage that my team submitted to me. I could find problems with ease because of the way my mind worked.

I didn’t realize just how much I missed coding when I started using WordPress in 2003. Sure, I still looked under the hood and customized things once in a while, but there is much to be said for getting your hands dirty and creating your own code.

Now that I am taking refresher courses on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and learning a few other things to even out my frontend development training, I realize just how much I missed creating code and working from scratch. I am in the process of creating a blog and portfolio that is going to have some cool features to show off my skills, and I am loving being back in my element.

I’ve spent so much time in the past 20 years working to improve my writing, that I let my web development skills go fallow, and now that I am back building websites and apps, I feel a part of me that went silent is coming back.

My mind feels sharper, and where writing fuels my creative side, development boosts my analytical. I cannot wait to get into new territory in my personal development when I learn Python, React, Node.js, Django, SQL, Bootstrap, MongoDB, and others.

It’s like a part of me woke up that I had forgotten, and the rush I get creating code takes me back to the 90s when everything was new and computers were still something only a few people enjoyed. In 1997, I went back to college, hoping to learn technology, and get a degree in 3D modeling and Animation. But when I figured out that I wasn’t much of an artist and less of an animator, I started teaching myself about the web and the technologies that run it.

Everything was fresh and new because up until this point, I had only ever worked in fast food. The idea that I could make a living working with computers was mind-blowing and I took to it like a duck in water.

When I wasn’t paying the bills flipping burgers, I was in the computer lab learning, experimenting, and testing new things. It was a journey of discovery for me, and while I will always enjoy my creative side (writing, graphic design, web design, video production, podcasting) and I will never let that nerdy tech-obsessed kid hide in the shadows again.

Now that I am a nerdy tech-obsessed old guy who is an Apple devotee who loves artificial intelligence and quantum computing, I guess it is only fitting that I resurrect that kid who just wanted to sit at a terminal staring at code for hours on end.

It’s time I get back to my roots and started diving deep into programming, networking, technology, and the science of computers.

What is something you remembered you loved when you got older? Enlighten me below in the comments.