About Me

My coding journey kicked off in rather a quirky fashion. Picture this: while at College, a friend asked if I fancied a bit of holiday work, knocking together a website for his employer. This was back in 1998, when the internet was still toddling around in nappies. We all sensed it was going to be massive, but it still seemed shrouded in a bit of enigma. The job interview wasn’t what I expected – they practically shrugged and said, “We’re not too sure why we need a website, but apparently, it’s the done thing.” When they popped the question, “Can you build one?” I bluffed a confident “Absolutely!” and voila, the gig was mine. Truth be told, I hadn’t the foggiest idea about web development!

I scurried home and plunged into a frantic week of research on AltaVista, determined to figure out the mysterious art of web creation.

With a week’s worth of harried research and a shiny new copy of ‘Macromedia’ Dreamweaver in my arsenal, I embarked on my two-week stint as a ‘Webmaster’ (a term I’ve never liked). The web was the new kid on the block back then, and some of my colleagues were sure it was just a fleeting fad. Unfazed, I whipped up a basic Homepage, About Us, and Contact page. Dreamweaver was a doddle to use, quite intuitive really. Pleased as punch with my handiwork, I polished these pages until they gleamed and even started to get the hang of this ‘HTML’ malarkey. A week and a half in, I proudly unveiled the website, feeling quite chuffed with myself, I must say!

Just when things were looking up, with a few days left of my summer job, one of the company’s directors summoned me. “Can we feature our flagship products on the website?” he enquired. “Of course,” I declared, already envisioning a new product page to round off my summer job. They were pleased with the result, and to my surprise offered me a retainer to keep the site ticking over post-holidays – no need for a student loan the next year, cheers!

I diligently set about crafting a ‘product’ page, showcasing their flagship items to the world. Initially, it was smooth sailing. However, in those days of ‘dial-up’ modems, the hefty product page was a tad too cumbersome for some visitors’ computers, especially with all those images. Quick thinking led me to break down the page into smaller, individual product pages, significantly slashing loading times. The company was happy, and I found myself with a few more pages to maintain.

Then came the twist: they wanted every product variant online, not just the flagship ones. This was shaping up to be a mammoth task – a website with potentially hundreds of pages. A slight panic ensued; this was going to be a nightmare to manage.

Back to square one, I had a brainwave – why not use a database for all the info and create a template file that draws data from it? It seemed like a stroke of genius, except for one tiny detail – I was clueless about databases and their web integration. But, I’d come too far to throw in the towel, so it was back to good old AltaVista for some more digging.

After a bit of sleuthing, I settled on using IIS with a Microsoft Access database, and created .asp pages for content delivery. Talk about a game-changer! Suddenly, I could spin up endless content with just one .asp page. I was bitten by the database bug, and bitten hard. The following months were a blur of learning and experimenting with these new ‘database-driven’ pages until PHP and MySQL entered my life and changed everything.

Initially, I was glued to Dreamweaver’s UI, barely dabbling in the actual code – it all seemed a bit daunting. But as my sites grew, I found myself peeking under the bonnet more and more, and to my surprise, the code started making sense.

Despite getting cosy with .asp pages, PHP and MySQL kept cropping up in my readings, and they seemed a better fit for my projects. So, I ditched the Dreamweaver extensions, rolled up my sleeves, and plunged into the code editor. Gradually, I migrated to slicker editors like Sublime Text, Atom, and Notepad++, and eventually settled on VSCode.

With my newfound comfort in code editors, I delved deeper into PHP and MySQL, developing database-driven pages that made site management a breeze. My toolkit expanded to include HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and even JQuery, though the latter was more of a ‘copy-paste’ affair initially. Eventually, I wanted a deeper understanding and took the plunge into JavaScript, crafting bespoke code to my heart’s content.

As my JavaScript skills blossomed, I discovered the joys of SCSS for CSS file creation. The nesting feature was a godsend, and the compiler’s error alerts were like having a guardian angel over my shoulder.

With the web’s evolution, I was drawn to the application side of things, and Python became my new frontier. Brilliant for automation, I’ve been tinkering with desktop programs that make life a breeze and dabbling in web apps with Flask and Django. While web apps aren’t my main focus just yet, I’ve got a sneaky feeling Python’s going to play a starring role in my future projects.

Who knows where this journey will take me, but one thing’s for sure – the learning process never ends.

Dan Slade