derek hubbard

It’s true… I’m finally starting a blog. I have actually been thinking of starting a blog for awhile now, but it has taken a considerable amount of thought to decide what I would actually want to blog about.

I knew whatever I blogged about, it would be software related. That was the easy decision. But what software? Should this blog be about one specific language (C#, Java, etc.) or should I branch out and include other languages? Do I just blog about features of the language I’m familiar with, or do I also blog about features I’m learning? Or maybe I should just blog about IDE’s and utilities that make software development easier (Visual Studio, LINQPad, Notepad2…).

A little background info on me, to give you an idea where I’m coming from. I graduated from the University of Dayton in 2004 with a bachelors degree in Computer Engineering. My first job out of college was with a consulting company in Cincinnati called Software Architects (SARK for short). I spent three years with this company as a Java/Oracle developer. They aren’t around anymore as they were purchased by Sogeti USA LLC shortly before I left.

In June 2007, my wife and I moved to Dayton, Ohio for her job. I also switched jobs at that point and accepted a .NET developer position with The Berry Company. Switching from Java to .NET was a farily easy transition for me - for the most part, the languages are fairly similar. Now I’m a Senior Web Developer with Berry and have been there for the last 1.5+ years.

Even though I’m a .NET web developer mostly developing in ASP.NET, I’m extremely interested in other software development technologies. For example, I would really like to learn more about development on a Mac (Cocoa and Objective C). I am also interested in learning more about the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) and the Yahoo User Interface (YUI) libraries.

So getting back to what the topic of this blog is going to be. After a lot of consideration about what I know, what I enjoy doing, and what else I would like to learn, I am hoping this blog will be about everything I mentioned before. I would like to share what I can, both from my experiences at work as I develop in ASP.NET and C#, but also from my experiences outside of work as I learn and play around with new technologies.

As I come across new programming problems and solutions at work, I will be sure to blog about them here as it is very probable there is someone else in the world that is trying to solve the same problem as me at the exact same time. Also, I hope to blog about new technologies as I learn them - sharing and documenting my learning experiences (both the good ones and the mistakes).

Hopefully this blog will be of interest to you and a learning experience for all of us. If you have any feedback, feel free to post any comments or suggestions and I will do my best to respond to each one.