Being a freelancer is awesome for so many reasons. However, it comes with a whole lotta responsibility. I don’t really mind the responsibility, especially since I deal with stress pretty well. But sometimes it can really eat into your personal live, and it’s hard finding time to have fun. Such has been my life over the last two months.
In other news, I’m now a Drupal convert. Why Drupal vs. any other CMS? I guess because my first experience with Joomla wasn’t too great, and in the process of looking at CMS reviews, Drupal was right at the top in many categories.
I spent most of December doing a website implementation with Drupal. Learning something new is always a hard process to go through. You learn through online guides, you learn through books, you learn by reading user forums, and if you’re like me, you learn by jumping right into the source code to try and figure things out. I guess I’m just a hands-on type of person (also known as someone who hacks around until they get it), and spending hours reading things seems tedious. First there are the intro guides which never fully seem to click until you’ve read the exact same thing about 10 times. Then there are the implementation guides which can end up giving you too much information, or are not specific enough to what you’re trying to accomplish. Then there are the programming guides and API references which can be a bit overwhelming especially when you only have a vague idea of what you’re looking for.
I would think it’s pretty much a rule of thumb with new projects that most initial implementations end up being total hacks. And as you continue on the development path, your products get more refined, until one day you can comfortably do an implementation in about 1/8th of the time that your first project took, and your code is mighty elegant and flexible. But being a perfectionist, it’s hard for me to start something that I’m unfamiliar with because I’m always thinking “am I doing this right? Am I using this system the way it was intended to be used? What if there is a better, more eloquent way of doing this?” At those times, you just gotta push through and now you’ll come out right in the end.
On a rating of 1-10, I think I’m at a 4 in my skill level with Drupal. But I’m definitely hooked on it now, and I intend to get a whole lot better in the coming months.