Becoming Mobile

It's been a while since I last added a post on to this blog, mainly because I have been very busy. I took on a full time PHP development role in September and left behind the world of search (for the time being) so that I can really push on with my career.

Anyway, down to business. I once thought that if I could master a web language then I could stick to that, work away day after day and life would be good. This was of course a feeling I had before I had actually learnt a language, before I had actually applied the skills in a real life situation. This is now such a silly notion to me now that I cannot believe that I actually thought that, but I guess that is the benefit of hindsight. This is even more astonishing when you consider what the Internet is and how the very nature of the beast requires you to be fluid, adaptive and progressive. This now brings on to my next point. Mobile Apps.

I really do not want to talk about what I am going to do with them (in this post) yet, but as I have actually bought a Mac Mini to develop iPhone Apps I am sure I am going to have some great fun in doing so (but more on this later). The main point of this post is to discuss why I made the decision to start building apps and continue on my learning spree that I have been on these last couple of years. The purchase of Mac while important, only served as a catalyst to get me thinking about this idea of linked learning (a phrase I have coined for this post) and what the effect of learning one skill helps/drives to you to learning another. If this makes no sense to you, then please let me explain:

Years ago I taught myself VBscript to run within the ASP environment. These scripts required the use of databases (new skill) which in turn required me to learn MS Access which in turn allowed me to create dynamic website. The need to learn how databases worked is the link I am referring to. The acquiring of knowledge for one subject turned into another. This is quite a short chain of events, mainly because I came to the whole ASP game quite late, .Net was coming in and I considered learning that for a while but ended up choosing PHP instead.

This is very much a stripped down version, but you will get the idea. The arrows are not literally a point from one skill to another, just merely a way of demonstrating movement. If this was to be made a graphical representation then it would be more like a flow chart and many of the skill sets would be interlinked.

PHP/MySQL Led to Programming Skills -> OOP Theory -> XML -> javaScript

MySQL -> Advanced Database SQL-> Stored Procedures

Apache (running on windows) -> Regular Expressions

javaScript -> DOM knowledge -> jQuery and other frameworks

Apache (Windows) -> Apache running on Linux

Apache (Linux) -> Linux web server setups -> Linux OS

Linux OS -> Application Languages (c++, python)

This is not an exhaustive list, I could be here forever doing that. I would also have to decide at which point does each skill set become its own subset. Also, just because one skill has fired another it doesn't mean that its parent subject has been exhausted. This is especially true with something like Linux, which is a huge topic and will take years to master. The problem with this linked learning is that fact you may spread yourself a little thin. While I can apply all the skills mentioned above I am always new things about each one. In addition, as the skills are inter-related, it generally (though not always) makes each new skill all that bit easier. For example, once I had learnt PHP, I found C++ much easier as many of the constructs are similar in nature.

Does this post apply to other areas, of course. You could apply it to just about anything, if you have a similar experience then please think back. It may help you to [re]discover skills and improve your career prospects or just help you find some direction.

So what's next on the learning radar? Well, like I mentioned at the beginning of the post it is now Apple Apps for iPod and iPhone, so please watch this space as I be reporting on this once my shiny new Mac mini arrives and I learn how to use OSX (oops another new skill), it's a good job I know how to use Linux as I hear they have many things in common ;-)