Welcome to my (outdated) world.

[LeonLatex]

What should I say 😲😓 I'am a 49-year-old man who has a career in the IT industry in Norway, but left the table completely a little over ten years ago. Now I'm up and running again, but the road is long, very long, and steep. I have to learn it all
 again. Hope you persevere, from here can come many strange questions, but the problems I see I can help solve I will of course contribute what I can, and which I see is relevant to the questions that may come, but I see that much of my knowledge is too old and extinct 😣😥
But as I said, my weight lies in what for the rest of you in here will seem old and useless. When it comes to programming, most things are probably long gone, and since I am almost 50 years old, I will probably never be the same as I once was, but I have an understanding and knowledge of what most things are. At the same time, I want to thank the person or people behind this forum and everyone who has helped me so far, or who helps me in the future.

So, my knowledge extends across a wide range from idea and planning to fully developed product in web programming and design, to operation of data center, domain registrar and other web hosting services. I graduated from college and university as a "webmaster" and graduate CCIE. A title that also gave me a lot in the position as webmaster ,.

Edited September 24, 2021 by LeonLatex

[Strider64]

Welcome aboard,

        You are never too old to learn and do something that you like doing. I'm 57 years old and teaching myself Django as I am like Python3 for the simplicity of coding. Uselessness is something that isn't in a coder's vocabulary.  

[LeonLatex]

Thanks 😄

[Barand]

I was in my fifties when I first came across something called HTML. I knew Basic from from my days with a BBC home microcomputer so I started using Visual Basic to create web pages. Daily, I would log in to the Compuserve Bulletin Board using my dial-up modem to exchange ideas (much like now - plus ca change, plus ca meme). I started to write Java applets to enhance my pages but, no sooner had I started to become reasonably proficient, the world switched to Flash (which has since died a death). Disheartened, I let the Java lapse. One of the biggest mistakes I've made as today's phone apps are essentially Java applets. A year or so later I came across PHP and much prefered its Java/C type syntax to Basic. My preference was cemented when I discovered that rewriting my VB/ASP scripts in PHP gave me a 3x+ speed increase (in one case a 70x increase in performance as VB was crap at handling long string concatenations).

Anyway, the moral is "You ain't too old".

[LeonLatex]

Great Barand. I think we found out we have gone through much of the "same old school" in our search for knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, I have lost a lot of that prize in recent years. But I try to come back. Therefore, my apartment is filled with BOOKS, many books, too many books. I read a lot, try a lot, the only problem is that it does not stick as well inside my head anymore. But I have the knowledge and understanding of what I read and do. I'll probably never get back to where I once was. On the other hand, you Barand, you are a man who has surprised me with your knowledge.

[gizmola]

1 hour ago, LeonLatex said:

Great Barand. I think we found out we have gone through much of the "same old school" in our search for knowledge and experience. Unfortunately, I have lost a lot of that prize in recent years. But I try to come back. Therefore, my apartment is filled with BOOKS, many books, too many books. I read a lot, try a lot, the only problem is that it does not stick as well inside my head anymore. But I have the knowledge and understanding of what I read and do. I'll probably never get back to where I once was. On the other hand, you Barand, you are a man who has surprised me with your knowledge.

Barand surprises everyone -- he is clearly a Cyborg.  

I am also from the generation of 300 baud dialup modems, Compuserve, AOL and the first wave of Personal computers.  I have in my days programmed in Basic, Pascal & Turbo Pascal, 808x Assembler, C, C++, Paradox, DBase3/Clipper, Powerbuilder, Gupta SQL Windows, Perl with DBI/DBD, Java, Oracle PL/SQL, Bourne Shell and Bash, PHP with CakePHP, Zend framework 1, Symfony1, Silex, Symfony 2+ and Laravel and Javascript, most recently with React.  Along the way, I have worked on Devops projects that involved coding with Puppet, Terraform and Ansible.  I've also used various relational DB's including Sybase & Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL/MariaDB and Postgresql, and did a good amount of work with MongoDB, and Redis. I have done a little bit of coding recently in Python and Go.  I regularly work on my proficiency with css and new javascript frameworks like vue.

A fun trip down memory  for sure, but out of all the things I've worked on, I can remember off the top of my head, only the things I'm actively working with.  I have programs I wrote years ago in c++, where just looking at the source code is like looking at hieroglyphics, and I actually wrote that code!  

Essentially you use it or lose it, and even though I am not as agile in moving from project to project as i once was, I try to keep learning new things, keep building code, and in essence keep myself interested and engaged in what is going on.  So much has changed, just in PHP itself, all for the better, that there is a lot to pick up that's new.  I also have done some mentoring of younger people, and many of them are floundering in the ocean of things a senior person knows and understands. 

I urge you not to worry too much about the rust you have, and just wade back into it.  I have to use google and stackoverflow a lot more than I used to, but having a foundation, even if it's in your past, is a huge advantage over young people who have none of your experience.  You might have forgotten things, or had things change, but those are things you can relearn or update your knowledge.  The important thing to do is build and/or work on things, whatever they may be.  

 

[LeonLatex]

Yes, Barand is a realy a clever man. He has a lot of experience and knowledge. He is like a walking library 🙂
To long and and to much to quote an answer, but i answer the best i can. This can be a little forth and back and scrambeled. But... It was realy nostalgic to hear from you Gizmola 🙂 We have walked much the same road thru the years. From the late seventies to the date today. First time on a PC in mid of 82 (my uncles) so later on my own computers like PC, Commodore64, VIC20 etc. In the late seventies I joined my father at his job. There, the office ladies sat on terminals with green screens. Those terminals were my first encounter with computers, and I was hooked. 

I joined my father at his job. There, the office ladies sat on terminals with green screens. Those terminals were my first encounter with computers. When it comes to programming, I started like you with programming in the small and created small programs that performed small and idiotic "things" on the screen. I have not been to as many languages as you. Ie. It probably started with Visual Basic. Then it continued with C, C +, PHP, SQL, MsSQL, ASP, PHP, MySQL, Perl etc. So my experience is far from on par with what the rest of you here at PHP Freaks can do. My years with computers, electronics, programming, etc. gave my life a meaning in addition to other hobbies I had from when I was a little boy. I was good in sports and then in the branches of ski jumping, ice skating and handball. I was about to be selected for the national team in all three sports. I was bullied a lot as a child. So it was good and could hide me away with all this in addition to what today goes under DATA and IT Subjects.

But everything was turned upside down in June 1988. When I was 16, in 1988 I was exposed to a very nasty traffic accident. I was pumped to life and lay in a coma for a long time. There was only one body part / organ that were not damaged. It was my right leg from the knee down. With so many head injuries I had, much of my life, my childhood and upbringing disappeared until then. So life began in a way; again. Because of the type of head injury I got (cognitive head injury) so it has also been so-so with e.g. memory and learning / remembering what I learned after the accident. This will always be the case. while I was trained again and again in life, I trained as a car mechanic, because it has also always been a part of my life (bicycles, mopeds, motorcycles, car and motor). But I still had and still have an understanding, knowledge and experience in computers, networks and programming etc. So I have been self employed for a few years and been involved in building up Norway's Largest DataCenter (as one of the idealists and managers). After I could no longer work as a car mechanic,

I became disabled. THEN I got it for me to take one after education in computer and IT. I graduated from college and university as first webmaster, and then I added the entire CISCO Program as CCIE at the top. Because of. my head injury so I have to keep it in operation at all times. After 10/11 years as a self employed and building up Norway's largest dataCenter, I sold everything I had here in Norway and traveled abroad, got married in Thailand Lived there, got divorced and lived the happy days of life in Torrevieja in Spain. Then I found out I wanted to be self emplyoed again. I have been trying for 6-8 months now, but the road is long. I do not yet know if it will be fully realized. That's why I want to learn programming again. I have the knowledge of the programming languages at the stage 10-15 years ago. Understanding and knowledge based on experience of what I could build up again and on before 1988 and after. I know in other words what the different terms mean, but when it comes to getting it out practically and developing something (feel free to call it sensible) then it's pretty dead. So if you feel abandoned or think my questions are too stupid or I repeat myself (too much), there is a reason for it and I can not do anything about it. I hope for understanding, but that you / you treat me like other people who do not struggle with the same problems as me. Try and carry on with me. Have a good night everyone. Yes ... I also have ADHD.

(Was this understandable?)

[gizmola]

Yes, and it sounds like you have lived a varied and interesting life, despite some serious setbacks.  With that said, with your background, you should be able to find remote work.  I neglected to talk about my experience in the cloud.  I've been interested in hosting, virtualization and "the cloud" for a long time, and have spent a lot of time learning about how to use AWS, which I employ frequently.   In the last decade, Devops has become quite a career path, as it combines system administration & IT, with an understanding of SDLC and cloud services.  There is substantial demand, and I suspect that it might be an area you would enjoy.  You would need to learn about AWS, but there are plenty of resources to teach you about that, and you can do a good amount of learning using the AWS free tier.  

As for PHP, modern PHP is being done with component libraries, and typically one of the main frameworks.  I consider it essentially a 2 horse race now, with people using either symfony or laravel.  They are both excellent frameworks.  I have more affection for symfony, and I think it has some advantages over laravel, at least in combination with an ORM.  You have to gain a working understanding of PHP namespaces, standards produced by the PHP Framework Interoperability Group, composer etc.  Pretty much everyone is using git, and any form of development in a team requires a working understanding of how to use git, often in conjunction with projects hosted at github.  I'm sure there's more I haven't thought to add, but I often have recommended this talk from back in 2012 by Ryan Weaver, who has long been the documentation lead for the symfony project, and is the force behind https://symfonycasts.com/, which offers elearning about symfony and other related webdev topics.

This point in time, was when PHP rose from the ashes to reclaim a spot at the table, as a competitive professional web development platform, and the video explains the problem PHP had, and how it was solved.  Since then the PHP language has been improved and performance is the best it has ever been.

 

 

[LeonLatex]

It was fun in a good way that you came across Cloud Services. This was something I foresaw a need for already in 1995/96. Ie. that I foresaw that such a need for private and business in the future already then. I just started working on plans and some market research in 97. Nothing developed other than that it was written down and written down a lot. The biggest problem at the time was lines and traffic flow and the pricing of this in Norway at the time. At that time, "Telenor" was the only one with lines good enough. They had a monopoly on these lines because "Telenor" was owned by the government. If you had something that was justifiable, and wanted to be financially justifiable, it would back then cost a lot in relation to what it costs today.

During the first half of 1999, I was headhunted to the project one data center / server center. Or it was probably a friend who came to me and aired the idea for me. Then we gathered three other friends of ours. One from Mirc / Irc and two from a group that met at "The Gathering" Lan Party in the Olympic(1994) Viking Ship Skating / sport arena on Hamar here in Norway. We were a total of 5 people.

We started from home with servers stationed in the states. Each and every one of us who were spread all over Norway each had our office and workstation from home. We started up in the small without any financial support. Only private money, and no investors. We did not even have any plans for how this was to be done other than some loose plans I had to build a financial foundation. This happened faster than we could have dreamed. The ball was in the air. Since then, it has only continued to soar.

So back to the cloud and my plans and ideas. In 2002, my notes and ideas for a cloud service were rediscovered. We did not call it a cloud then. I'm not sure if we had a name for the project, but suddenly after a few years of running cloud services, suddenly Amazon came up with the same offer we had. We launched this as an additional storage service primarily for small and medium-sized businesses in addition to the hosting services which were the actual service from the start. Because of. that hosting and registrar services grew so fast, our storage service was not followed up and expanded as fast as it should. Not until we saw how fast Amazon and several others who had hung on to the cloud wave grew. It became popular.

Only we pioneers did not see this coming so quickly. Ie. We foresaw it, but now we were dependent on getting investors, but we did not get investors to believe in our project. Not until it was too late. It's still an offer they have, but not the way I would develop it to be. In short, this was the start of the reason I sold out. Because ... What I did not tell until now is that we grew so fast in hosting that we could free ourselves already in 2000/2001. Then the operation was moved from the states to Bergen. That's when we started building our own data center. Even then, I wanted to lay a separate fiber line between Bergen and Oslo to keep costs down in the future. Unfortunately, this did not happen until 2009/2010. I wanted to build a department of the data center in Oslo as well. We had to rent pipelines and cableways from Telenor (the Norwegian government monopolistic phone company). This was my last project before I sold out just before Christmas / New Year 10/11. Now my main focus is to get back to the developer I once was, both idealistic and practical.

So back to what you said: Absolutely, remote work is something for me. Not only in programming and development, but also as a hired consultant. I can participate in everything from the smallest unborn idea to a fully developed product.