Jun 25, 2009 0
Abstraction, Frameworks, and things…
Hello again blog,
Abstraction
Before I get into topic I have a little news. First, it appears I may get some company here. Two of my buddies/colleges, Jeff and Trey, may be writing some posts here. I am excited as this may help me learn this blogging thing. Also, I may be turning into a jquery evangelist. So on to the topic.
First let me explain my point of view. A little more than two years ago I had no clue I would be where I am now. Until that point I had dropped out of college, worked as a diver for a while, and spent every dollar I had to my name. I don’t exactly recall what possessed me to go back to school, though it could have been some decent parents. (thanks!) But anyways, one day I found myself at ITI Technical College with thoughts of going into networking.
Whew! That could have gone bad!
The, during my second semester, I was introduced to application development. It was then I found something that not only had the ability to keep my attention, but I wasn’t that bad at it. The more and more I learn about the industry, the more confidence I have in my career choice.
While I was going to ITI, we mainly learned the dot.net framework and general programming methodology. One of the classes that I didn’t give much weight was web design. Horrible choice!! As fate would have it, I landed a job developing web applications. Now I quickly became handy writing asp.net applications, but the HTML and Javascript underneath was still very much a mystery to me. So I began to start relearning HTML, Javascript, and AJAX. With HTML I began inspecting the view-source of all my ASP.Net pages to see what rendered as what and digging into the W3C Schools. W3C provides great in-depth free tutorials online!! Then I went and got a Javascript book from the “Head First” series, and dove into this new world.
I was really enjoying developing things and solving problems. And the more I began to understand what was going on, the more endless possibilities of what was possible filled my head. First it was learning the visual, higher-level, abstracted code that got me interested in programming. Now, the more in-depth knowledge that may have bored me in the beginning was like a whole new world. And after spending some time trying to get familiar with the inner workings of the web, I am noticing a gradual move back to a more abstracted level. I have began using a home-grown code generator (borrowed from a colleague) and have just joined the jquery movement. I am even considering trying a few css frameworks. I am finding that now with more insight as to whats going on under the hood, I can use the tools and frameworks to greatly improve productivity. Jeff at Coding Horror wrote a great post about it in “The Wrong Level Of Absraction.”
I guess the point I am trying to make is that abstraction is a great tool in programming, but there is no substitution for knowing the underlying technology that makes “the magic happen.” Once you understand what is really going on, you can then manipulate your code to do so much more.
Also, nice question here on Stack Overflow HERE.
Well, that is all for today.
