The Prologue

I started this blog as a way to chronicle my own development as a programmer, as a complete novice knowing only the most basic html codes and ziltch on Java and C++. It is a challenge to myself to see if I can put my head to it during my spare time and design something useful that someone would use. I spent most of my working life working for others until I caught the dotcom fever late 90s and I quit my very well paying job to work for myself. I have not looked back since. I am not rich by any means, in fact, you could say I am poor but contended, that I get to call my own holidays and work as much or as little as I want, as long as I plan ahead and make sure my own finances are in order.

So here it is, the tech revolution has caught my imagination and I wanted to give myself a challenge, if I could learn something new that is Greek to me and build an interesting application.

I have three passionate pursuits, photography, art, wine. Conservation and reducing my own carbon footprint is important to me so I have some ideas where I could start.

First of all, I need to learn programming. After extensive research on the web, I came across a link that took me to itunes classes at Stanford U. Apple has decided to make the Apple IPhone programming course lectures available via itunes to the general public. In addition, there were also lectures on Programming Methodology and Programming Abstraction one could download and watch at your free time. So I sprang into action, downloaded all the lectures, about 50 of them in total.

I have watched both lectures 1 and 2 of the Apple IPhone Programming Course and have just finished watching my third Programming Methodology lecture by Prof Mehran Sahami. Now these are lecture notes from Fall 2008. (2009 lectures were not on itunes for some reason). I am not sure if Prof Mehran Sahami is still teaching that class, but you should take the class from him if he is. Prof Mehran is so funny and makes this beginning programming class interesting and yes not intimidating, can I say that.

A book I bought recently to read that I highly recommend:
The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold, Microsoft Press, 2000. Here is a link to Amazon page