About

To give you an idea of the site's progression, it originally started on LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySql/PHP) back around 2000. I worked on C++ projects for years at my first job, however, we ran our sites on LAMP so it was natural for me to learn more based on what I knew.

Eventually around 2009 I was first introduced to Design Patterns and the Gang of Four. I tooled around with some of the concepts and built a PHP framework that mimicked many .NET framework objects down to the namespaces with reasonable exceptions given the differences between a strongly typed language using C# .NET and the mixed type language of PHP. Honestly, it was very interesting but the concepts weren't fully gelling.

I switched jobs in 2011 after over a decade of service to meet up with my good friend Jonathan Danylko who mentored me and directed me to some great references that finally opened my eyes to the true potential of Refactoring and Design Patterns. I can't thank him enough for helping me to finally connect the dots.

This job was also a great opportunity for me to reinvent myself by converting a LAMP site to ASP.NET. I still managed LAMP sites for clients in the evenings preventing additional exposure to ASP.NET at home for a while.

In early 2015 I was let go leaving me unemployed with my family for the first time and with only two jobs behind I was a little worried. However, with great confidence earned from this great learning experience and the support of my mentor, friends, and family I knew this was the moment everything changed for the better.

I took advantage of those first couple weeks to revamp my LAMP site with Bootstrap. My interest in Web Services grasped me so I put together that SOAP/REST service using WCF. Both experiences benefited me and my new team.

2016 saw me finally converting my LAMP site to ASP.NET disconnecting my site from my clients allowing me to experiment properly again now in the Azure arena. The process nearly burned me out as many long hours were required to resolve misconfigurations all while maintaining a stable experience for my clients.

Recovery was slow, but now reaching mid-2017 I'm feeling renewed after attending the Azure BootCamp and Stir Trek. I've already created an ASP.NET Core WebApi using VS2015 SP3. Due to issues with my Team Services Build Definition not appreciating all of my hard work, I'm recreating the project in VS2017 to see if the new ASP.NET Core Preview steps work cleaner than the other clunky version I couldn't get to work.

So as you can see, always changing, always learning.