Hello, this is my first post ever, so I'm not sure how it will be.

The begining of everything

It was the begining of 2005 and I was excited to start a new course, Web Design, but it was only after 3 or 4 months that we started the HTML topic, this changed my life forever, I was so happy that I could make a red text slide on my screen, using the old marquee tag (RIP), that I created my very first website, it was a website for a Stepfather's Jeep Club to share the pictures of our trail rides. It took forever to load, because all the pictures was loading in full size.

After that I made another website using Yahoo Geocities. It was a website teaching how to begin a stamp collection. Both were horrible in look, but I was really happy doing that, I followed along the HTML book so many times, that I memorized it.

I knew nothing about CSS and Javascript for me was like magic, at that time the biggest effects we could have was flash, that I really hated. After these two websites I kept this on standby for a while.

The true begining

It was only at 3rd semester of college on (April 2010) that I returned creating websites. I friend, Pedro Godoy, asked me if I knew PHP, because he was needing someone to help him with some freelancing jobs. I said that I didn't knew but I could learn it. so he lent me this Book "PHP - Programming with Object Orientation - Pablo Dall'Oglio". This is a 576 page book that I read and followed in two weeks, I was avid to start working with this friend, because I finally had found my self. I really enjoyed working with PHP, and the possibilities was huge.

With this friend I worked as a freelancer for almost 6 months straight, three times a week, 7pm to 11pm, and then some times after that. Besides that we worked together with some Java, he had a Desktop Software for gym management that sometimes needed maitanance. This friend called me to become his partner in a Social Project, called Vira Lata Digital, that has the goal to teach technology, robotics, sustainability, and enterpreneuship for needy children and teenagers. But that story is a topic to another post.

I love this book, the writer is so good, and is so easy to learn with it, today is a little outdated. I wanna make a public thanks to Pablo Dall'Oglio, that he helped to change my life. "THANK YOU, Pablo Dall'Oglio!", well anyway I'm rambling and running away from the topic. but this book was the base for my work during the next 6/7 years, I changed somethings in it's code to fit my needs.

The next level

On my College Final Paper (Feb-Jun 2017) I decided to make it on Software Engineering. So I made a partnership with a client and built a Medical Software for small clinics. This one is not in my portfolio because of Copyrighting. This Software was made using Laravel, version 5.3. The examining board evaluated the software so well that they said it could serve as a case study for a future master's degree on Software Engineering.

Since then I've been using Laravel for almost everything I build. I notice how much it's productive and fast for development. I used Laravel for small websites, softwares, CMS, E-commerce, Rest APIS, and learned how to test with TDD, using PHPUnit that is built-in with Laravel.

My next steps

Once I read something like that: "The secret for Professional Success is to have challenging goals, and when you reach those goals, you set new ones and more challenging." My next steps is to learn and master VueJS and PWA applications. I really believe PWA will be the next "big thing", it's much easier, simple and cheaper than native apps. I decided VueJs, because it's also built-in with Laravel.

As said in marketing groups the chances to sucess is higher if you pick up a niche, and focus on it. I decided my niche for now and it is: "Web development, using Laravel".

I hope you enjoyed this post.