Hello, [blog] world!

Yes, it was probably at least two years ago when I first thought, "I should start blogging," and here, finally, is my first ever post. Since this will be a blog about ColdFusion development and other programming related topics, I couldn't resist a "hello world" style title for my first post. That said, I'd like to share a little about why I decided to start blogging, what I hope to share and what I hope to gain from blogging.

First, my relevant geek background, in a nutshell:

• First program written in BASIC on a TRS-80 to calculate my baseball batting average at approximately 10 years old.
• Geeked out in MS-DOS, C programming and a touch of Perl (1989-1994).
• Finally made the switch from DOS to Windows 95 in 1996.
• Entered the University of Rochester as a computer science major -- a little too disinterested in many of the non-programming topics -- graduated with a music degree and a minor in mathematics, but also got a good little dose of data structures, Java and C++.
• HTML, MS Access and other general computer-related gigs for a couple years (1998-1999).
• Web development using ASP scripting with MS Access and SQL Server databases (1999-2002).
• Fell in love with ColdFusion around 2001 (using ColdFusion 4.52 at first) and used it to build and maintain dozens of sites (2001-2003).
• Really started digging in to object oriented CFML development and helped build, grow and maintain a group of large-scale applications primarily running Mach-II and ColdSpring (with a touch of Transfer, Reactor and Model-Glue) (2004-2008).
• Read on for present-day geekiness...

In October of 2008 I decided to go solo and freelance develop again to have a better opportunity to code and learn and code and learn (as opposed to management and meetings and management and meetings). I've spent the last few months doing nothing but coding and learning, and I'm loving it! My main project right now is www.mortgages.com, which I've built up from a blank slate, using ColdFusion 8 Enterprise on Linux, PostgreSQL 8.3, Model-Glue 3 (Gesture, bleeding edge release), ColdSpring, Transfer ORM, MXUnit, jQuery and and I even wrote a little code myself :) I also decided to ditch Microsoft entirely and I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on my development laptop, along with a Windows XP VM via VirtualBox virtualization to allow for IE testing (will be looking to setup a Mac testing ground as well). This project has helped me ask and answer a lot of questions around good object oriented design, best practices, using the right tools, etc. Though I feel I've had a great sprint of learning over the past few months, I'm hungry to absorb so much more!

That brings me back to my main point, this blog. From many other bloggers I've learned a lot through finding countless answers, great tips, great examples and tutorials, etc. I've also solved a number of problems either on my own or with the help of tid-bits from various online resources. So, I'd like to have a platform to share when I think I have something worth sharing, and that will be this blog. I will also likely blog about some of my own learning experiences, when I think it might help others embarking on a similar learning path. If I'm lucky, some folks might actually read my blog and share some feedback, which will help me and other readers learn more and better ourselves as programmers.

Well, thanks for reading. Cheers to blogging!