New blog… Where to start?

Hi, I’m Jonathan Crozier and welcome to my blog!

This is the first post I’ve written for my website and I am very excited to begin this adventure into the ‘blogosphere‘.

A question that I imagine is on most people’s minds after starting a personal blog is “what should my first blog post be?”. Many people blog about the first thing that comes into their head, but I believe it is important to start off on the right foot and make an introduction before getting stuck into any of the technical goodness.

Who am I?

First of all, let’s start with telling you a little bit about me…

I’m a software engineer from Northern Ireland who has a deep passion for learning. I love to expand my knowledge of science, technology and especially programming related topics.

I’m the Head of Software Development at a highly respected local tech firm and, in my role, I regularly provide mentorship to my colleagues and seek to educate them in ways that will lead to their continued development and success.

I like to adopt a professional attitude and approach to everything I do, striving for excellence in every area of my life. I am a continual learner, gaining new insights about my profession each day as part of my current role and while working on side projects.

Check out my About page for up-to-date information on me.

Why Blog?

I’ve created this blog to document my technical knowledge, act as a resource for other software engineers, and to help me extend my reach to a wider audience.

On my blog, you’ll find useful ‘how-to’ guides and code that you can use in production. Although, as with all code, a disclaimer is a must, one of my pet hates is being offered up a potential solution only to have it spoilt with a big caveat stating something like “this is not how you would do it in production”. I hope that on this blog you’ll find answers to questions that some other blog authors are not willing to tackle. I’m here to help you with those problems where you’ve thought “I can’t be the only person in the world who is trying to accomplish this!” and yet you haven’t found a solution.

I want to build a community of software engineers who are able to share their problems and solutions in a collaborative environment where all opinions can be shared and discussed with mutual respect and understanding.

Intended Audience

When you visit my blog you can expect to see fresh content on databases, scripting, general programming (mainly .NET) and web development.

My blog posts are aimed primarily at experienced programmers who are seeking to up their game, expand their knowledge and find solutions to real-world problems. However, I also enjoy writing posts that are targeted at beginners and try to cover what kind of mindset a professional programmer needs to cultivate in order to succeed.

Regardless of where you are at in your journey, I trust that you will find the information I share here both simple to comprehend and straightforward to follow along with.

Getting Involved

I welcome constructive feedback, please feel free to leave comments on any of my posts with your thoughts.

If you have a question that can’t be dealt with via the comments system you can send me a message via my Contact page.