Plans, plans, plans . . . part 1

It's been a pretty interesting and chaotic last week with the programming. I've gone through the manuals and "Dummy" books, but I've decided to really focus on taking paths in which I can get productive immediately. I'd like to start work on a series of small programs that will become of use to me in short time: that is to say, I'm approaching this as a stone carver now, and the architect of the pyramid later. I'm chipping away at the stones, only dreaming of the large structure that could be built from small, efficient building blocks.

So, it may not be wise to build small programs quickly. In fact, if a programming language is the raw material (and the machine code the physics dictating what is possible), I'm taking my time now understanding that raw material. I'm delving into Linux, Apache, MySql, and PHP in a bit of a chaotic, experimental fashion, investigating when I hit road bumps, looping back to further understand the design or form of this or that. I can't exactly define what I've learned, but to return to the pyramid-building metaphor, I'm learning the tools and learning the stone, feeling out the right way to chip away at the problem, to form a perfect block from stubborn rock, to stack these solutions in a nice order.

I decided to turn away from jumping into MySql and PHP headfirst by using a web host control panel to write scripts because I want to get a feel for where these systems are coming from: how they function, how they're designed. It's easier to work with something when you can determine its size and scope, when you can have a rough handle on its capabilities, on how it moves. So from my first week with MySql and PHP I redirected my focus to the baser systems, that is, Apache, and beneath that, Linux.

Biggest road bump thus far is the installation of Apache and MySql on Linux. So the plan is to systematically learn enough about Linux to understand how it works with Apache.

More later, my coffee is having no effect and that must mean it's time to crash.