The Story So Far…

I do things.

In the past, I was a video producer by trade. I have designed web sites and wrtitten comics. I like to learn; I’m 12 hours in on an MBA.

And then, earlier this year, I heard that Microsoft was going to release a set of tools called XNA. This set of tools was going to make use of the C# programming language to write video games. I decided, fairly qucikly, that I wanted to do this, too. I wanted to learn this, too.

So I stumbled upon a Microsoft contest – “Upgrade Your Game”. Basically… it was tutorials on how to write games in C#. And it was way too complicated for me. So I went and found other tutorials, and began trying to learn C#.

In these tutorials, we were supposed to learn how to write a C# RSS feed reader. I found that I was loving what I was doing. I offhandedly mentioned it to my boss… and found out that my place of employment was actually a JAVA house, and should learn JAVA instead. So I stopped, borrowed a book called “Head First Java,” and continued on.

In the past 8 weeks or so, I’ve now read the majority of:

Head First JAVA
Head First JSPs & Servlets
Database Design for Mere Mortals
Learning SQL
Sams Teach Yourself JAVA in 21 Days

and pieces of:

Head First Design Patterns
Java 2 Primer Plus
MySQL Cookbook
Thinking in JAVA

So I’m learning… learning the hard way. And the kink in all this knowledge?

On August 29th, a beta version of the XNA tools will be made available. So now, my mind is going to be so tempted to flow back and forth between learning JAVA for web development, and C# for game development.

So this blog is here for me to post my thoughts on the programming and learning process. Sure, I’ve read a few books… but I’ve still barely put my toe in the tub of water. I’ve yet to write a program or class that’s not in a book. I’ve not designed anything or made any startling discoveries.

I know this; I’ve enjoyed learning programming. Now if I can just find the time to do it.