Obligatory Introduction Post

First things first, I should introduce myself.

My name is Robert Bryant, and I am currently studying Software Development at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT). I've got a decent background in IT and Communications, about five and half years in the US Navy as an IT. From radio communication with handheld HF transceivers, to network and server administration, I did a bit of everything. But, as cliche as it sounds, it didn't start there.


It started around the time I was seven, my family had an old Intel 386. It had a TURBO button, naturally it was never turned off. I remember playing your run of the mill children's games, chasing down the alphabet as Donald Duck. Eventually my father bought a new computer, a 486. I received the old one, along with the responsibility of fixing it when I broke it (and I did, a lot).  As my father continued to upgrade his computer, I continued to inherit his older ones, I broke them too. All in all I've spent a fair amount of time in front of a screen and my posture reflects that...


Fast forward 20 years.

This is my second year at GMIT, and so far things are going well. I'm enjoying

this course, it's been very hands on and I don't think there is a better way to learn coding. So far we've covered Java, C, C#, and HTML/CSS. We've done a fair bit of Business and Business Communications on the side as well. But this year GMIT changed the curriculum to include cross platform app development with the Ionic Framework. It is very much a "learn it yourself" environment at this point. I immediately realized that there are many different parts that go into making an Ionic app. In a way it's like a Windows app, you use a markup language to control the look and feel of the app, but the real work is done in a more object-oriented language. Except AngularJS isn't really a proper, full fledged object-oriented language... but technicalities are overrated, and metaphors are fun.

Learning Ionic, conveniently enough, coincides with a project in another course of mine; to create an online presence through a blog. As you might guess, this would be that blog. So I decided to put what I learn to the metaphorical paper, as I learn it.