Welcome to the August 2014 DaniWeb Digest
Welcome, also, to Area 51. No, not
that
Area 51, you will find very few aliens on DaniWeb. Rather what used to
be a semi-secret forum reserved just for DaniWeb admins, moderators and
team colleagues. I say used to be because with immediate effect
Area 51
is now open to all those who have passed the 'still a newbie' phase of
their DaniWeb membership. Think of it as somewhere to talk about
semi-sensitive site related subjects without them being open to wider
membership view. Just to clarify, unless you've achieved the combination
of post count (five), days since registration (five) and reputation
points (15) that is required to break out of the guest/newbie membership
level you will still not be able to access Area 51. Think of it as
another incentive to contribute more to the community, along with being
able to use live chat, send private messages, disable advertising (yes,
you read that right) and make posts without the CAPTCHA requirement.
Member of the Month
The latest member of our wonderful community to join the DaniWeb 'hall of fame' is
Veedeoo
who has been a member of our community for two years now. Hitting a
near perfect 97% post quality score speaks volumes for his
contributions, of which there have been fast approaching 1300 at the
time of this interview. Along the way, Veedeoo has helped solve 200
problems (and that's just the ones that members mark as solved of
course) and has become something of a permanent fixture in the
PHP forum. Let's get on with the interview!
Where are you from originally, and where do you live now?
I am originally from Oceanside, California and I am currently living in Diamond Bar, CA.
How old are you?
I am 21 years of age.
What is your current occupation, and have your ever done anything unusual in the past?
I
am currently attending Graduate Study in Physics. Outside my hectic
graduate school schedule, I am pretty much writing codes in PHP. At the
age of 13, I was a co-developer of an open source application called
'vidiscript version 1.01 to version 1.03'. I also release version 2.0 of
my own in 2011. When not busy at school, I do freelancing as a PHP
back-end developer. I am bounded by strict non-disclosure agreement so I
can't even tell my mother about my clients, but they are pretty big in
the U.S, UK, and across the world.
Have
I ever done something unusual in past? I am not really sure which one
of those things I did in the past were unusual. First of all, I am a
self-thought programmer, because Physics and Mathematics is not giving
me enough adrenaline and excitements. Unlike programming, I can test my
hypothesis spontaneously if it is valid or not. I did not take computer
science in college because I was only 12 years old when I jotted my
first HTML tags. However, after learning the ins and outs of HTML, I was
not satisfied with it, because it can't do anything. I wanted to learn
something more advance. I decided to drop my HTML book and focused on
reading PHP books. While writing codes in procedural PHP, I noticed that
HTML markups and PHP codes are pretty mixed-up and overcrowding on a
single page. I just hated looking at my codes in this arrangement. To
try to make my codes look aesthetically presentable, I experimented in
separating the business logic and the presentation logic. The result was
amazingly clean and well organized piece of work. I proudly showed my
work to my brothers, but they told me I should be using Smarty template
engine or TBS ( TinyButStrong). I immediately jumped into the template
engine bandwagon, but only to realize that I must know OOPHP to fully
take advantage of this new found knowledge. I spent great amount of my
school allowance buying PHP books that teaches OOP and MVC framework
development. After six months of living with oily hair, pale complexion,
gallons of coffee, while dealing with OOPHP and MVC., I just realized
and I believed in the concept that there should be separation of concern
in PHP application.
At
the age of 13, I passed the same PHP certification that my older
brothers took 6 months before. I was desperately looking for a summer
job, but because I was only 13 turning 14, I have to lie about my age
and told them that I was 16 ( kids are not allowed to work in U.S).
Luckily, I was hired as a remote developer by a company where I was able
to demonstrate my capabilities of writing an applications, plug-ins and
modules. I temporarily stopped developing the open source vidiscript,
after graduating from high school. However, before completely taking a
long vacation from PHP, I was able to demonstrate how to write my very
own PHP MVC pattern framework that does not load all the classes at one
time. My theory was pay as you go in terms of server resources and
memory. So, my autoloader loads only the objects and methods as needed.
At the age of 19, I received my first Bachelors degree in Mathematics,
and then Physics at 20. I was Accepted in Graduate program in one of the
prestigious University here in California the very same year. Outside
my Mathematics and Physics works, I was able to self-study and acquire
COMPTIA +, COMPTIA SERVER +, COMPTIA NETWORK+, NETWORK SECURITY+, and
LINUX+ certifications. I can write program in ASP.NET, C++, C#, PHP,
Python, Ruby, JAVA, Javascript, Jquery, and few others. I am proficient
with Sunlight Foundation API in python, Gilt Groupe API, Mandrill API,
Evernote API, Oauth2 with GitHub API, WePay API in Ruby, YouTube API,
Twitter API. My favorite basic programming language when I was younger
was qBasic. The first program I wrote was a simple monkey vs. banana
game where bananas are falling from the sky and the monkey has to eat
them to score in the game.
What is your favorite OS and why?
I am pretty open with the OS. I could use Windows, but I highly prefer Ubuntu or Linux Mint.
What first brought you to DaniWeb?
After Vidiscript was sold, the support forum was closed down. I
really missed helping other people out. I just love solving problems in
PHP. I also believe that this is the best place to retain all the things
I have learned in the past and upgrade some of it.
What makes you stay here?
When I am not busy, I spent great number of hours reading posts
on DaniWeb. For more than two years, I feel connected to this community.
I also admired the persistence and the patience of the volunteers as
well as the administrators and moderators.
What do you think of the new Rewards Points system that DaniWeb has recently introduced?
What
do I think of the new Rewards Points system? I think it is an excellent
system. It is an excellent system because not only it will promote high
quality responses on the questions, but it will also encourage more
members to become an sponsor or sponsors.
So, have you made use of it by cashing out yet?
I
have not made use of it, but I think I will donate most of it to my
friend's project on GitHub. The project is developing a an Application
GUI for CodeIgniter MVC framework to help people in starting with
CodeIgniter MVC framework.
What are your interests outside of IT and outside of DaniWeb?
Outside
of being a full blooded geek, I love playing electric guitar. In fact, I
built my own tube amplifier and wound my own humbacker pick-up coil on
my Les Paul. I can play AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Gun's n Roses riffs. If I am
not playing guitar, I spend my time designing my own Electrostatic
Speaker which I think is really an amazing concept.
Name the best thing about DaniWeb overall, and one thing you would change if it were in your power?
Overall,
DaniWeb is best known for helping IT professionals and aspiring new
comers. If I would have a chance to change one thing if it were in my
power? I would definitely leave it as is.
Any fascinating facts about yourself that you would like to share with the DaniWeb community?
I
am not aware of anything fascinating about me. I guess when I feel
lazy, my body really mean it for real. However some people always
fascinates me either in a good way or in a bad way. Years back, I came
across with an MVC PHP book and until now I could not forget what the
authors have said about self-thought programmers. They said that most
self-thought programmers are "Under Educated". I totally disagree with
this claim. The assumption may be true to some, but not to all. Having a
computer science degree does not give the right to be calling anyone
"under educated". What I considered "Under Educated" is if both of us
went to Princeton for Bachelors degree in Physics/Mathematics and then
attended CalTech for Masters degree and yet none of us can solve the
theory of relativity as it applies to 5 relative objects moving in all
directions between the sea and the sky. If can't solve that, that's what
I call "under educated". Programming is something where we can create
applications based upon the given constraints and rules. If any rules
are violated or constraints are not observed, it is pretty much the
program will not work. What is so "under educated" about following
syntax rules and reserved word constrictions? Just saying :). Besides,
no good school for PHP.
