I don’t know what it’s like having a child of my own (that I know of anyhow). I have a dog and I felt pride in watching him learn and progress in dog school, that much is true. However, I never thought I’d feel the similar type of pride over a project I’ve worked on. What do I mean? Well, besides the obvious pride one would feel over a job well done…I feel the pride (I’m guessing) that one might feel in watching their first born learn how to walk or make friends (probably the 5am talkin’ here) or even bring home their first ‘A’.
Ok, so now you’re asking WTF are you talking about…well, let me explain. My first “web development” project was to build the Publication Reporting Tool. In order to do this I had to teach myself PHP (scripting/programming language for the web) as well as MySQL (database stuff). After slowly getting off the ground and slowly gaining speed I finally finished version 1.0 (I think) and have released it within the school. That means I’ve finally got REAL users and REAL data being entered into the system…and guess what…IT WORKS!
Anyhow, nothing special I guess…but after demoing the application at 7am to the department of Surgery and receiving a few “Support” emails, I have come to realise (knock on wood) that the application is pretty solid. After all those hours of stressing, writing and re-writing modules I’ve finally seen the finish product do it’s thing and it is good! And to make it all make even more sense, it’s like a child…it’s not perfect, but it is good enough for me!
Cheers!
Andrew
