Introductions
Hello World! Seems as apt a way as any to start this blog. Let me spill some ink to outline how I got here and what this blog is all about. I hope by the end you'll want to continue following along with me on this journey.
How I got here... #
I spent my childhood in front of a computer. My family tells stories of me teaching my Grandma how to boot Windows 98 from DOS by entering the command W-I-N and ENTER. When I was in middle school, I got my first taste of programming working in Game Maker and building video games at the local rec center. I built a 2D RPG in the style of Zelda and proudly burned it to a CD to play at home. I got my next taste of programming in High School when I learned Java in "Introduction to Computer Science" followed by "AP Computer Science".
I then went on to study Computer Science in college and took several internships working on a variety of systems ranging from a Windows WPF to reports from an Oracle database. After graduation, I worked at a consulting company where I got even more experience working with both web and mobile technologies. This is where I wrote my first Android app, a conference room status app written for POE tablets. I had hoped to pivot that experience into a full time Android role, but instead found myself working for a great company but doing front-end web development. During that time, I continued to do Android projects on the side including projects for a nonprofit and a local conference.
Finally, in late 2021 I took the leap and began my first full time role as an Android developer and have continued that work since. Professionally, I'm most alive when working on beautifying an app, teaching things to other developers, or improving app architecture for readability and consistency.
What's this blog about anyway? #
Over the past few years, I've found that while I get a lot of enjoyment sharing my knowledge 1 on 1 with someone, that severely limits my potential reach and results in repeating ideas over and over again. I'm hoping by writing a lot of this down I can create resources that people find useful and can reference as needed. I'll be tagging these posts as deep dive and tech tidbit depending on the scope of the writing.
I'm also planning to catalog the work I do on my side projects using the dev diary tag. Right now I'm wrapping up a "Read the Bible in a year" app that is meant to encapsulate the best practices in Jetpack Compose as I've come to know them. After that I'm planning to work on a custom browser that limits a user's ability to mindlessly browse the web (an app which I definitely need). Finally for now, I'm hoping to return to a project I previously started which is an app for doing relaxing timed stretching exercises.
Conclusion #
So stick around and follow along with my work, I'll be posting each week with a new article. Reach out to me via my email address (dladukedev@gmail.com), follow me on GitHub (dladukedev), and subscribe to my RSS feed to stay informed of new posts. Until next time, thanks!
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