42

It’s not the answer. It’s just another number. Part of the big picture. If seeing that number makes you smile, then you’re probably in the right place.

Welcome to Today, I Learned.

Software development is a amazing journey. I’ve been on mine for a good chunk of being on this pale blue dot. My father parlayed an affinity for gaming by encouraging me to actually write them. My first memory of “coding” was actually typing in a program on our Commodore 64…from a print-out on dot matrix printer paper. When it ran, I could move something around the screen. And just like that…I was hooked. Simply firing up and playing Jumpman was never going to be the same again.

Fast forward to today.

Creating something that helps people do their job better, enables them to sell their product, to kill a few hours by romping through a dungeon - it all gives me an immense sense of satisfaction. One of the best parts of the software development journey? Learning new things. I’d like to share what I have learned, and what I am learning, with you.

Here on TIL, I’ll explore various programming languages, APIs, techniques, and news about the development world at large. Full disclosure: I have a penchant for game development topics. My current “side project”¹ spans an expansive acreage of the software development landscape. On this forum (the blog) I’ll share progress on that project but particular topics will get their own tutorials on the overall TIL site. After all, this site is about learning, not my random projects!

To get the party started, I’ve created a tutorial series detailing the work that was required in order to get this site up and running. Visit the GitHub Pages tutorial to learn more about how to setup your own site, complete hosted by GitHub using Jekyll. There, you’ll learn how to setup a completely remote development environment, customize the stock Jekyll theme to your liking, and employ the Liquid template system to create menus and a blogging system.

Before finishing this post, I’d like to extent a hearty thanks to the fine folks at GitHub, who’ve put together an amazing platform that this site is built on. In addition, thanks to the developers and maintainers at the Jekyll project. I’ve used a lot of blogging platforms in the past and this one is truly a joy to develop and write with.

And with that…here we go!

~Zim

goto 42;

¹Arguably the largest solo project I’ve tried to take on, to date.