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I’ve been thinking about starting a blog of sorts for a few years now. Blog might be too strong of a term for what I have in mind so perhaps it’s better to call these posts “musings” since that’s what I’m expecting them to be. Musings on various topics that I find interesting, projects I’m working on, cool tech I’ve discovered, and maybe even some structured notes on problems I’m trying to solve. I’m not a particularly good writer so to any writing/grammer connoisseurs out there: you’ve been warned.
First though, a little introduction. My name is Jacob Hearst and I first fell in love with programming when I found a book on Python
on the shelf at home as a kid. Neither of my parents are programmers per se but my dad was looking to learn a bit of Python to help him automate
some things at work which is how the book landed on one of our shelves. I immediately saw the endless possibilities programming provided and
decided on a very reasonable first project of building a chatbot. I very quickly realized that I would be writing if elif statements until
the end of time if I wanted to cover all the possible inputs a user could give so I abandoned the idea, but my curiosity was piqued.
After messing around in Python for a while and learning the basics of controlling the flow of a program I eventually found Codecademy which really poured gas on the fire of my interest. Codecademy is where I started to learn how to make websites with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript as well as where I enhanced my Python knowledge.
Through highschool I mostly stayed with web development although towards the end of my time there I did pick up some basic Android skills and put together an app to help encourage diabetics to log their blood sugar. Like most of the projects I work on in my free time, it didn’t end up getting released anywhere, but it was another experience in a steadily growing list of experiences building software.
As you might expect, I graduated highschool knowing exactly what degree I wanted to pursue: Computer Science. 4 years at the University of Wisconsin Stout got me a degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Mobile Applications as well as two internships, one of which landed me my current full time job.
That pretty much brings us to the present day. I’ve been working for my current company, Jamf, for the past 3 years full time and have been doing my best to absorb all the information and experience I can.
Over the 10+ years I’ve been learning about this field, I’ve read probably thousands of blog and forum posts, tutorials, and pages of documentation, all of which have helped me in some way or another. My hope with these musings is to give back to the community that fostered my growth and maybe even help someone who’s exactly where I was on my journey all those years ago.