Blog Post

Upon cleaning some of my external hard drive, I found a little gem: my first lines of JavaScript. Just a few lines to show the date a week from that date - nothing groundbreaking. However, I recall being satisfied with it.

• I had estimatedTime create a new date object.
• estimatedTime then transform into 7 days from the date.
• <div id="futureDate"></div> would then display the output which is the text in the string.

I remember when I first started messing around with HTML/CSS the summer right before my first year (2004) in high school. I wanted to just replicate layouts I had seen on other websites. Like any other teenager, I became pretty active on Myspace. I noticed most of my friends started customizing their Myspace layouts and most of the them came with a link back to the site where the layout came from. I would look around for one I liked but it never really felt right with any. So, I decided I'd find the one closest to what I want and just modify it.

While I reflect on how I got started with markup, I think the only reason I really stuck to it was to solve that initial problem of not finding the right Myspace layout. As it turns out, a few of my friends were not that satisfied with theirs either which led to my first freelance gigs. As I continued to get requests, I would learn more and more to continue being able to provide the demand. One friend in particular would constantly challenge me with new questions... a layout that rearranged nearly every component or add different interactions. Oh, and you know... him constantly changing his mind.