Recently, managed cloud hosting platform Cloudways interviewed me about my path in PHP programming and software development on the way to launching Meeting Planner.

They asked me about how I started programming:

I began programming in basic when I was eleven on my TRS-80 Model III (see raised at Radio Shack). I learned assembly language programming in Radio Shack classes and was fortunate enough to be able to find and afford private tutors for deeper Z-80 and 6502 learning. I learned Visual Basic at Microsoft and coded some prototypes but I’ve never considered myself a professional developer. I’m primarily an entrepreneur and a product manager.

And venture into how I approach programming today:

Recently, I gave a meetup presentation on how I built the JQuery popup calendar for Meeting Planner. The date and time picker widgets I was using confused customers. Frankly, I didn’t think I had the skill to build a responsive, scrollable, popup calendar with drag and drop and sliders. Then one day, I just began breaking the tasks down and googling on line for one challenge at a time. How do you build a responsive, scrollable table with fixed headers and columns? How do you do drag and drop with table cells? How do you get mobile touch events to work with JQuery UI? It took a week or so and a couple of overnight hacking sessions, but the results has made Meeting Planner incredibly faster and easier to use.

Read the full Cloudways Interview with Jeff Reifman

Posted by Jeff Reifman

Jeff is a technology consultant based in the Pacific Northwest.

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