Tools of the trade

Inspired by Rob Conery’s post I’ve decided to write my own blogging engine and yes I can so see all those out there’s point that there is a massive amount of more than adequate blogging engines, CMS’s etc already out there what’s the point and in many ways I agree I’ve tinkered with wordpress for long enough now to realize how much work has gone into that to bring it to the masses and in the reasonably polished stat it’s in now.  Looking at subtext etc I can see the amount of love and attention that has gone into these engines is phenomenal and in some ways it seems disrespectful to shun them and try for some half arsed has up that will be my attempt but at the end of the day it’s my attempt and that’s what matters.  As a reasonably junior developer I can see all the benefits  of creating my own.

Speaking as someone with 3-5 years experience in development and 8+ years experience as process Technician and Time served ToolMaker I feel little emphasis is but on skills building in the It industry.  From my experience I’m sure others have varying experiences.  The thing I do know is that as an engineer I had to serve an apprenticeship which meant working under mentors doing menial and often degrading task with the aim of rounding me into the finished article.  Some of the initial task would involve making Items that I could use throughout my career.  Plum bob’s, clamps gauges, vices the list was impressive many of which I still have in my tool chest gathering rust in my dad’s workshop.  My point being that I could just as easily have gone and bought these tools, many of which would have been a dam sight better any one witnessing an apprentices first attempts at turning, milling etc will understand but they were ” MY” tools and I loved the feeling of working with something I’d made.  The skills learnt producing these seemingly pointless tools transferred onto production projects and strengthened my talents without the pressure that comes with high tolerance production environments.

I can see the parallels with my current web projects but unfortunately my web learning curve is higher whilst my approach to honing my skills has been much more disjointed this I believe most (Honest) Developers will agree with.  We tend to learn what we need as we need it with little structure or planning in the approach.  So as part of my new aim to really push my skills in development I’m going to produce my own blog as Rob suggests and at some point show my code so I can have a massive peer review and see where my short comings are.

The engine will be written in an MVC pattern using asp.net and I will try and implement many of the patterns and practices Rob and others have championed.  I’m also working through Rob’s storefront video series in an attempt to bring some structure and balance to my skill set.