I’ve always, always, asked “Why?”. So much so that my own mother called me bug. I had to question everything, had to understand how everything worked, and I wouldn’t just take any answer – I had to find out for myself. This is one of those things that has not changed. But, when I first picked up my 360, I accepted it at face value. It was something that provided vicarious experiences in worlds that we could only imagine existed.

Of course, I wanted to know everything. How the games worked, how the images moved, how, when I pushed a button, I could rule the world or destroy it however I saw fit. I began teaching myself Java. There were so many layers to programming that I decided school was probably going to be the best way to go. A structured environment that would provide me with relevant knowledge.

Enter Waukesha County Technical College.

The one thing that I took out of my entire experience at WCTC was confidence. While I’ve always been a “Why?” person, I’ve never been one to have the confidence to have an answer. The final year wasn’t about proving I could, they gave me the knowledge I needed, it was about why.

Why I chose X framework. Why I chose X color. Why this works, and why this other thing doesn’t. It’s a great feeling when you are presented with a question and you can say “Here is my answer, and here is why”. There might be 18 different ways to do any one thing, know why one way is better, but be open to the other 17.

One of the reasons why I love the web is because it is always changing. Something new is created everyday, and that something has a chance of catching on. With so many possible somethings, how does one stay in the know? How does one keep all those technologies strait: by reading blogs, attending Meetups, and knowing the basics. You can dive in head first even without explicit knowledge of X technology, as long as you understand how the base language works, and how to put it to use.