I began developing for the web in the mid-90's just as a new idea was emerging. Rather than making static websites manually one HTML file at a time, we could now create vast e-commerce sites and entire software applications, by connecting them to a database. It changed everything.

At a local ISP everyone saw the potential and our small team got to work diving into an early IIS beta. Being before Google, I went to the nearest Barnes & Noble and bought my first Wrox book on Active Server Pages beta, now known as Classic ASP. Everyone wanted to tap into this new technology. I was surrounded by brilliant people, and we were learning everything we could. It was an exciting time.

After helping the team build several database-driven websites with Classic ASP and Microsoft SQL Server, and a bit of fun building a Windows 95 Active Desktop Component for our customers featured on MSDN, I was then tasked with building an internal project entirely on my own. My first foray into being a full stack. Designing and building the entire web-based application. I had found my passion.

I cracked open my Wrox books, rolled up my sleeves, and got to work. I was having the time of my life. I still do.

Knowing, how and where you can optimize the software across the entire stack, to propel the performance into sub-second times. Understanding the full stack, and how to make the Frontend and Backend work in concert together, to deliver that performance, with a UX that delights users.

After moving out to California, I quickly found an opportunity in the health care industry to build an e-commerce site from 0 -> 1 as their first web hire. I still had my Wrox books. After building their e-commerce site and growing the team, I was soon recruited into the financial industry where I learned about building database-driven software at scale, distributed transactions, and working on n-tier architectures.

I would later work in a non-profit where I would have the chance to broaden my experience further in building and managing an entire Windows network, creating another e-commerce site from 0 -> 1, and learning a new set of creative skills in designing their entire brand identity for digital and print.

After a decade of building sites and web-based software with Classic ASP the industry shifted again with the introduction of a new programming framework, ASP.NET. I discovered what is still my favorite programming language today, C#. It changed everything, again.

For the next decade I would build in ASP.NET and C#, primarily in the Human Resources industry. I enjoyed working with teams large and small on projects both national and global in scale. Learning about time-zone localization, as well as multi-language and currency globalization. I still make my own sites multi-language for fun, including this one.

I would also learn about architecting data and software for disaster recovery (DR) and how to implement and test it. When we had the major blackout that shut off power to Southern California, I was in a meeting, and there was only a brief flicker of the lights, as our systems failed over to backups without skipping a beat.

After working in the Human Resources industry for many years, I wanted to make a meaningful difference for the planet. I found an exciting opportunity with a great team in renewable energy, and would learn an entirely new software stack as well.

My first project was building a SPA to handle big data charting. It would be used by technicians, managers, and the Operations Command Center to help manage operations of a national fleet of solar plants. Data was being pushed from solar plants across the country, aggregated, and put into daily PDF reports. I was tasked with making this an interactive web application, that could handle this much data, that everyone could use.

It was an incredible challenge with the state of technology available in 2016. There are thousands of sensors on every imaginable, measurable piece of equipment, at every solar plant. All reporting real-time on-change data measurements, that needed to be aggregated into selectable data resolutions, in a wide array of sophisticated energy calculations and interactive charts. And work in a browser.

At the time, charting software from 3rd party libraries could handle a large number of datapoints on a single line series or two, but try rendering even 50 line series in a chart, let alone thousands of line series, and your browser was toast.

I got to work, and built it all from scratch using JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas. It could handle it all. I started with a blank white box and built every tick, gridline, label, and line series in a chart. Numerous charts and chart types on the page, that supported selectable data resolutions starting with a 5m resolution. The ability to easily compare multiple days of data side-by-side, zoom in and out, and numerous other charting features, in a SPA that allowed everyone to see and interact with this enormous amount of sensor data and energy calculations coming in from the fleet of solar plants. That all loaded and rendered nearly instantaneously, with sub-second response times. That was version 1.

It was a fun project, working with a lot of smart people who had even bigger visions of what we could build together. While teams worked together to spec out version 2, I had the chance to work on building numerous advanced energy calculations in Python, managed 3 Jr. developers, and led the development of client reporting that would deliver polished reports to the owners of the solar plants in a variety of different aggregation time frames. I would also have the chance to learn AWS and Serverless as we moved everything from on-prem into the cloud.

After teams finished putting their desired features and specs together for v2, I led the design and development. One of the features I was most proud of building for v2 was a Fleet View, where users could see charts for the entire fleet at a glance, with a variety of filters. It was a lot of fun, and a lot of work. I really enjoyed learning an entire new software stack in the renewable energy industry. However, after years of working with Python and PostgreSQL, I missed my favorite stack with C#, .NET, and Microsoft SQL Server.

I decided I wanted to take some time to enjoy life and get back into my favorite stack, and learn what had changed while I was away. The technology had evolved from .NET Framework 4.5 to .NET Core, and I was excited to learn all about it.

In addition to building this site in .NET Core, I also updated another site of mine from .NET Framework 4.5 to .NET Core to share some of my photography. Both with convenient CI/CD pipelines I built via Github Actions that makes deploying changes a breeze.