Drew Kwashnak

1754 points
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New England, CT

I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.

Authored Comments

I've used Netbeans, which includes a cool Google extension that helps in debugging. It allows me to make changes and view the changes without having to refresh the page.

Currently for PHP, my preferred program is WebMatrix 3. Unfortunately it is Windows-only. Visual Studio is also pretty good, but their PHP support is lousy (without paying for a 3rd party plugin).

Great to hear. I have been thinking of setting up a Raspberry Pi as a firewall before but wasn't sure about the USB Ethernet dongles and if they would be fast enough.

I only have the first generation (Model B) currently, which I don't know if it is too under-powered. Maybe I should look at RPi 2?!