Software development
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I differentiate software development from web development in the sense that all web development is software development but not all software development is web development. Web development is software development in a specific context, with contextual constraints.
I think I wrote my first line of code in the late ʼ80s using Logo. Did it again in the mid- to late-nineties; only this time it was animated and made sound. In 1998 I made my first website.
In the beginning I never said I was a developer; most times I still say I’m not. Back then I was strictly drag-and-drop.
Then my first paying client told me my HTML sucked and they expected better for someone with my billing. (I never did get paid.) So, I started doing more with ActionScript via Adobe Flash (which was Macromedia Flash at the time).
Flash gave way to database-driven websites using PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the MySQL.
This is when I really started looking into object-oriented development.
I freelanced full-time for from 2007–2010. I did sites using WordPress, straight HTML and CSS, and even my own CMS. Around 2011 I decided to try my hand at developing an app for iOS.
So, I started learning Objective-C and later Swift. I appreciated developing in both languages and in the Apple ecosystem in general. The app wasn’t a viral success or anything, but the revenue it generated did pay for the annual developer license. Unfortunately, no one was asking for more features and no one was reporting any bugs and Apple took it off the App Store.
In their defense it hadn’t seen an update in a pretty long time (years, plural). But, it still worked for me and I don’t do updates for their own sake like some others seem to.
Now I work in IT as an Agile Coach and Scrum Master, which is pretty interesting considering I still tend to say I’m not a software developer and my college career was in fine arts, which sometimes felt like the distant cousin of the other liberal arts. (Fine arts majors build things instead of writing about things, but our deliverables have roughly the same probability of becoming viable in the economic marketplace as philosophers, sociologists, or even art historians .)
So, all that to say, if you’re looking for someone who fancies themselves a hacker extreme or caped-crusading coder who knows everything from binary through Assembly to the moon, I’m not the guy. But, I’ve been around the block and I’ve seen some stuff, I guess.