Cliche title, I know, but this is my first real hello to the world of development, at least remotely seriously.

A little background may help. Like many before me, I've been working with computers since I was young in the 90's. Well, I was making sure my family's hand-me-down computer continued to work so I could play StarCraft and EverQuest. That curiosity with computers stuck with me, and while I thought I wanted to be a game developer for the longest time, my path pushed me in a very different direction.

To keep a long personal story short, I needed to start supporting myself straight out of high school, and while the idea of going to college was constant, I always felt like I didn't have the time alongside working to go. Of course, World of Warcraft came out around that time, so prioritizing my free time wasn't a strong skill in my late teens and early twenties. So I started working in the IT side of the field, faking it until I made it through retail, computer and laptop repair, then to service desk and system administration, landing me where I am today as a senior systems administrator.

I love IT and I love managing infrastructure, architecting the best environments for a client, and determining the best technology to use to better protect and manage our clients. But there's been this itch to be able to build things that I haven't been able to scratch. Sure I can build infrastructure, but that infrastructure is often used by someone actually building something new and creative.

I've tried over the years with little success to stick to programing. It always seemed like a distraction to progressing in my career. I've built plenty of static websites with HTML/CSS over the years, dabbled a bit in Javascript to make those websites do things (long before React and Angular, sometimes even before jQuery), poked around with Python and C++, and built many scripts with Bash and PowerShell. Never stuck with any one idea for more than a few weeks before moving on to the new IT cert or technology I needed to focus on.

Fast forward the better part of 18 years in the field and I feel like I've gone as far as I want with system administration. The itch to build is becoming stronger and stronger, and the call to programing louder and louder.

So, this is the beginning of the middle of my journey, where I finally focus on coding and building, using my experience as a sysadmin and my ability to learn highly technical concepts (and lets be honest, RTFM) and see where this goes.

I am excited to see what the future holds.