Joe Majewski

My Journey as a Webmaster (Part One)

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ] [ Part Three ]

While the majority of articles that I write are both informative and helpful to others, this particular entry is a little different. I thought it might be a good idea for me to write about how I got to where I am today in regards to web design, computer programming, and the like. This is going to be a lengthy article, so I decided to split it up into different sections placed in chronological order. Let’s start from the beginning:

Getting Started
I remember when I was just thirteen years old, a curious youngster looking to expand my knowledge with computers. I didn’t accomplish anything that was too extraordinary at this age, but it was only the beginning.

I had joined the local Computer Science Club at my Junior High School, and this consisted of weekly gatherings in the computer lab where we would learn basic HTML. I was fascinated with the idea that I could write a few basic lines of code in Notepad, but then open the same file with an Internet browser and have it look like a web page. Having understood everything that was being taught in the lab, I desperately wanted to learn more.

It was during this time that I did a lot of research on web design for my own personal benefit, and web design started to become a true aspiration of mine. Nothing that I created at this age was published on the Internet, but I still had a strong desire to gain a website of my own some day.

I took my first programming course when I was fifteen years old. It was a year-long course about Visual Basic, and the HTML that I’d previously learned didn’t offer me any sort of advantage over the other students in the class. I was overwhelmed at first, as this was something that was completely new to me, but I was no quitter. After much dedicated practice, I soon grasped these basic, fundamental programming skills and was able to create some pretty cool stuff. I will go into a few things that I created a little bit later in this article.

I recall the instructor once offering an automatic `A+` in the class to anyone who was able to create a game of Tic-Tac-Toe with a computer player that was programmed well enough to never lose to the opposing human player. I returned to class the next day with my working program, but the instructor did not follow through with the deal, which still bothers me to this very day. Needless to say, I still got an `A` in the course.

[ Part One ] [ Part Two ] [ Part Three ]

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