Coding & Caiques

When I was in elementary school, sometime around the third grade, our school got its first computer.  It was an Apple II.  It had a black screen with green text -- this was long before Macintosh or Windows existed.  The computer was a precious gem, carefully rolled from class to class on its wheeled cart.  We were enthralled by simple games like Lemonade; we input our lemon and sugar purchases and then reviewed the sales results.

It wasn’t until my working years that I understood how much they could really do and became interested in learning more about how to use them.  Eventually, I became the software support and training manager at a law firm that had just purchased a new SQL-based practice management system.  Although we had a GUI for configuring the system and creating and running reports, we couldn’t always customize the system or the reports the way we needed them to work.

The “aha” moment finally came when I started teaching myself SQL from Chris Fehily’s SQL: Visual QuickStart Guide.  Finally, I was in the driver’s seat and could make things happen.  Need a report to match attorneys with their court appointments and sort the results by appointment location?  No problem.

Around the same time I started to help a friend launch a new nonprofit organization.  I used the Joomla! CMS platform to create a website that she could edit herself.  I got deeper and deeper into helping her add new functionality to the site.  But I ran into the same problem that I had at the law firm: I needed to know how to code to build customized components.

I started teaching myself Ruby and JavaScript.  I loved solving problems.  It could be painful at times, but it is always amazing when you finally get something to work.