Preeti @ Web Hosting Search: How did you get started in programming?
David Walsh: I remember I was in a keyboarding class my freshman year of high school and a classmate said "David, check this out." It was a suave website about Pulp Fiction and then my classmate said "Yeah, I made it." I was completely blown away that it would be so easy to create a website. I remember going home that night and signing up at Geocities. I printed off every HTML and CSS tutorial I could find. Within a few months, I was pretty well-versed in basic website creation. I loved it and that's why I still do it today.
WHS: You say you don't 'design websites, but make them work,' what does this mean?
DW: I don't consider myself a "blank canvas designer." If I had to create a website from a blank Photoshop file, I would really struggle. Once a design is given to me, however, I'm great at making suggestions.
My strength is in programming. XHTML, CSS, Javascript/MooTools, PHP/MySQL, and the many other web programming languages are what I enjoy doing. I dig solving difficult programming problems during the website creation process. That said, I also work as hard as I can to avoid them.
I'd prefer a text editor over Photoshop any day. I'm probably 90% programmer, 10% designer.
WHS: How did your blog start back in 2007?
DW: In August 2007 I decided it was time to start a blog. I snatched up a domain name and secured hosting. Ideas for topics to write about were hitting me every day and I felt like I needed to "give back" to the bloggers that had provided programming solutions to me. With that I create the David Walsh Blog (originally the BluDice Blog).
In order to keep the blog rolling, I told myself I needed to post daily, even if the article was the easiest bit of code in the world. A year later, I've stuck to it and things are going well.
WHS: To date, what has been your most difficult project?
DW: I have a customer that owns 8 domains internationally (.de, .es, .co.uk, .us …). They asked for a CMS that would allow them to add different page content for each domain, allow for proofs and rollbacks of page content, provide different user roles and permissions, and different templates for controlling the presentation on the website. It was a difficult but rewarding project.
WHS: On a side note, what's your take on IE8? Everyone loves to bash IE, do you think IE8 will be any better than IE7?
DW: I don't know if it's possible that IE8 could be worse than IE7. I haven't followed IE8 much. I didn't like the compatibility mode feature at first, but I now I think it will be more good than bad. While I don't consider myself and IE hater, that browser's been bad for so long that it deserves the ire of programmers and designers.
WHS: If I wanted to make my own webpage and didn't know any coding, what do you recommend I read and what languages should I learn?
DW: I only know one way to become a programmer and that's the way I recommend. Start with HTML and CSS. Read a few web tutorials, download a text editor (jEdit, I highly recommend), and start coding. Make mistakes, correct them, make more mistakes, correct them… I truly believe the only way to become a better programmer is to just sit down and do it.
Once you know those two, jump into javascript. Javascript will be a telling factor in whether or not you want to be a programmer. If you enjoy javascript, teach yourself PHP. Have fun with the learning process, don't get frustrated with your mistakes, and make sure to blog about your experience.
WHS: Who's your favorite football team? And what movie, or two, can you not live without in this famous collection of yours?
DW: I've been a life-long Packer fan but their handling of the Favre situation has made me a Jets fan this season.
Top 3 DVDs: Braveheart, The Count of Monte Cristo, and Le Pacte des Loups. Quite honestly though, I don't know that I could live without any of them!
Thank you so much David for this interview! We have to give him even a bigger thanks since he is the guinea pig on this first interview. You can check out his website at davidwalsh.name and learn something new.
Commented by: Ben Hurts, 4 January, 2010
Great interview I must say!
Web design