Scripting

More and more I find myself moving away from scripting languages. They serve a great purpose as much of the web runs on them via Python, PHP, Ruby, and recently JavaScript. In the past, perl once reigned supreme as it has always been a great dealing with text which is the format of the web. Hell, perl is where I originally got my start trying to create a Final Fantasy Top 25 site... Those developing or browsing the web circa 1997 probably remember them all too often[1].

They've treated me very well over the years project after project but I'm starting to get to a point where programming in these languages, and in particular the frameworks, feels more and more like writing and editing config files as opposed to programming interesting projects. Which is great for getting projects live fast but after awhile the repetition grows on me (it's similar to grinding out RPGs).

So, my next project will be something more brain rocking and hopefully wake me out of this repetitive cycle. Currently I've been reading Functional Programming in Scala as a start and I really enjoy the functional aspect although much of the examples look more like algebra than code I'm used to and it's really breaking my understanding of everything. Besides that, might try playing with Objective-C again as there is an iPhone game that was started and my grasp of the language is slightly better now than it was a year ago. Who knows, just bored with creating generic websites now that this site along with Boycott Paper are live and I can get content onto the net.

Oh, happy holidays, it's time for some Chinese food.

[1] Those sites were usually very basic, you put a banner ad on your site, "Click here to vote for me", type of deal and then anyone that clicked on that link incremented a person's vote. End of the day all votes were reset and with my version the banner/button shown on a page did show their current rank. Oh, flat files were the storage engine back in those days and best viewed in MSIE4!

Greetings, I'm John Mullanaphy and currently creating stuff at Impact.com as a Senior Principal Software Engineer. When I'm not coding there then I'm usually found toying around on GitHub or creating comics at Boycott Paper.

Outside of the programming world you can probably find me on the mats rocking a purple belt at Marcelo Garcia Academy, streaming on Twitch, or playing some chess.

Feel free to message on Threads if you have any questions or requests. Please help yourself to my printable résumé as well!