Brain Stretching
Category: Tech...
Posted Wednesday, January 07, 2004 at 04:34 PM [GMT-6]

I started a new online class on Monday, "Beginning PHP." It's offered through the International Webmasters Association/HTML Writers Guild (IWA/HWG), of which I'm a member. I've taken several of their courses in the past, and have generally been satisfied with what I've learned. And it's really cool to take something that you've acquired in an academic environment and immediately use it on a real-life, honest-to-gosh paying project.

This is the first programming course I've taken (outside of company-sponsored on-the-job training seminars) since, well...since the era when programming was accomplished using 80-column punch cards. <geezer>Why, I remember when you didn't have a decent program unless you had to use a dolly to cart the card stack to the reader. And there was only one reader for the whole durn building! I remember when we were charged by the CPU-second to access the mainframe, and I remember how excited we were when technology advanced to where we could use a Texas Instruments Silent 700 terminal instead of punch cards! You young whippersnappers don't know nothin' 'bout REAL programmin'!</geezer>

Ahh, the good old days...not. I don't know if I have the mental wherewithal to become a competent PHP programmer, but it's a blessing to have the opportunity to give it a shot. My perspective is simple; learning is like breathing...you really ought to be doing it pretty much all the time.