[thelist] how did you learn?

[s t e f]

<quote who='Paul Bennett' when='29/06/2004 07:40'>

> OK, I have a question for all those developers out there who
> didn't spend 3 years at university / college to gain
> professional web development skills.
> 
> How did you first begin your learning? Did you pick up a book?
> Go to online forums? Ask a friend? Take a short course? 

Hi all, first post on thelist in months, too busy...

I began by gettig bored as a civil servant in a boring office with a 
connection. I surfed around, came to find Webmonkey, read all there was 
to read there.

Then I discovered The Fray (<http://fray.com/>), and from then on I was 
hooked by the artistry involved. I grew to respect and admire Derek 
Powazek, Jeff Veen, Lance Arthur, and the likes, which now makes quite a 
lot of people (not to mention the new ones like Dunstan Orchard, Paul 
Scrivens, etc).

Then I did, redid and redid again a personal site every month. Learned a 
lot in the process.

Then one day a friend of mine decided to hire me as a contractor. I left 
my state office and went private. Never regretted it.
In one year I had covered HTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, Access-driven site (yeah, 
right), and learned a lot in the process.

Now my learning fiber is inextinguishable. I spent somewhere between ten 
minutes and two hours a day on "technical watch" (basically, read, surf, 
read some more, participate on web-related blogs). Yeah, I'm lucky I can 
do that, I know :)

Oh yes, I had a three days training course in ColdFusion and one week of 
Java. The rest I learned by myself through the web (HTML, XHTML, CSS, 
PHP, MySQL, XML, XSL) and of course through monkeyjunkies and then thelist.

This list has been one of my major sources of information for years. I 
have learned that the more you answer questions, the more you learn, 
paradoxically: it helps you to theorise what you have learned so far, 
helping you thus to learn some more. Also, I've read many, many articles 
on evolt.org, ALA, Digital Web Magazine, and several hundred blog 
entries, I suppose.

-- 
s t e f
personal: http://nota-bene.org/
org: http://evolt.org/
french org: http://pompage.net/