phpete

I am genuinely excited (and nervous) to be sitting here writing my first ever blog post. This is a new experience but I'm glad to be at this stage in my journey.

So with no writing or blogging experience, here goes…

My Background

I guess the best place to start is to introduce myself.

My name is Peter. I am a husband, father, follower of Christ and a PHP developer, based in Scotland.

I have been building websites on and off since leaving high school in 2009.

There was a brief moment where I decided to step away from web development and landed a job in sales for a reputable U.K. retailer. During Covid-19 lockdowns, I found myself helping other businesses with their websites, which re-ignited my passion for development.

Five years later, I've been blessed to continue employment with this retailer within e-commerce team and now their IT team, where I use Laravel & Vue to tackle real business problems on a daily basis.

Purpose of this blog

There are two main reasons why I have built this blog.

A space to share and document
I don't use social media

Sharing & Documenting

As a programmer, I believe you are only as good as your last project.

At the end of each project, you usually walk out a better developer, where you've learned new skills or improved a particular skill. I'm not just talking about code itself, but it could be project management, software architecture or UI/UX.

For a while I have been keen to write about my experiences. I want to share "why I built this composer package", or "what drove me to make that decision".

Journalling like this is also a way for me to solidify my experiences and what I'm learning along the way.

Social Media

So this is more of a personal conviction. A couple of years ago I chose to remove most social media accounts. I only have X and Youtube. Even at that, I have only signed into X once this year (for the purpose of this blog).

From my experience, social networks are a huge distraction; full of political division, lust, advertising and generally, just junk. Maybe I'll write more about this another time.

Without being on social media, I don't have a platform to share what I'm working on or what I'm learning. This has been a big driver as to why I wanted to start this blog.

What will I be posting?

There are three main topics I want to write about.

Development

As mentioned earlier, I'll be sharing projects I've been working on, things I'm learning and other miscellaneous posts that are relevant to software & web development.

This could be in tutorial format, or me just writing a few paragraphs about some code I've wrote recently.

Music

So I love music (who doesn't?).

I love to compose my own piano pieces & produce my own Trance & Progressive.

My music is released under two alias', JERZYK & Lifeline.

It's been a while since I've released some music, but I've got a few projects ongoing and look forward to sharing them and writing about them here.

Faith

My relationship with Christ is the most important thing in my life. Over the last few weeks I've been convicted to read my Bible more & understand God and who He is.

So when planning out this blog, it was a no-brainer - this is a place where I can reflect and share my walk with the Lord.

I won't claim to be some theologian with all the answers, or holier than thou either, that's not the purpose of the Faith blog. Instead, just like my Development blog, I yearn to share what I learn and my thoughts on biblical topics.

What's next?

Well you now know the why. I understand this may not be your average dev blog that you are used to, but if anything, I hope you find this to be one filled with authenticity, that adds some sort of value or interest for you.

I've lined up a few posts to write over for the next few weeks, including my next post, explaining how I built this blog.

For now, please follow @phpete2 where I'll post updates from this blog.

Thanks for reading my first (of many) posts.

- Pete