Introduction
Hello, thanks for visiting my blog. My name is Jim Karnopp, and I am the owner of Kartech. This is my first post in the Kartech blog, so I figured this would be a good time to introduce myself.
I have worked in the IT industry for over 30 years. I have been a programmer, a SQL DBA, a system administrator, an email administrator, an internet infrastructure architect, and several other hats I am sure I am forgetting. I have been an independent consultant almost my entire career, so I have had a lot of variety in the work that I have done. The majority of my clients have been manufacturers of one type or another. Unfortunately I have never worked for a high tech software company, so I have always been in departments that are cost centers and not part of the revenue streams.
My current work is primarily developing web applications using the Microsoft .Net framework, angular, web api's, and SQL Databases. I have also been doing app development using the Ionic framework. I have been interested in getting more into the AI environment and work on real language user interfaces like chat bots and voice skills.
I end up bouncing between supporting older applications and SharePoint sites to doing new development, so it has been really difficult to keep my skills up to date. I spend a lot of my free time reading articles, going to user group meetings, and watching pluralsite and Udemy courses. They all help, but I never have the feeling like I have mastered topics the way I used to when I was younger. I read an article that suggested writing a blog as a way to share my work and get input from others.
I have written a lot of documentation over the years for my clients, but I haven't ever done much in public. I really should have done this a long time ago. It is never too late though, so I hope you enjoy the articles I post. I am hoping that by documenting things I am working on, it will help lock the concepts into my mind, and make me a better programmer.
I learned basic programming when I was 11 years old on my fathers TRS-80 (see personal blog article here), and I have been working with computers ever since. I ran a bulletin board service when I was a teenager using a Commodore 64 (see personal blog article here), and I got my first modern PC when I was in college and was forced to learn about hardware (see personal blog here).
My career started as mostly PC support as well as CAD support, then I started building PC's and network servers. I worked on development projects for quite a while as a network administrator and SQL DBA, but it wasn't until the web took off that I started really programming. In the early years most of my work was in classic ASP and PHP. I did some perl, Cold Fusion, and JSP. I loved learning new languages. When the .net framework came out, the companies I worked for were very slow to migrate to the new technology. I liked the new framework compared to the old style scripting, but I really wasn't a fan of web forms. My main customer also had a requirement that we do everything in VB which I was also not very happy with.
When MVC hit the scene, I started getting really excited about programming again. The IT management changed at my main customer and we had freedom to use new frameworks and start using C#. I started writing web application with MVC and entity framework. Being a DBA, I wasn't very comfortable with the code first approach, but once I got used to it, I started using it for everything.
Learning .net core has been another new challenge especially in a corporate active directory environment, but I like the lightweight aspect of it, and I love having the dependency injection built in. I have also really enjoyed working with the angular framework especially since it was rewritten in version 2. I am struggling with keeping up with all the open source tools, but with every project, I get better and better. For my own projects I use github, but for projects at my customer, we use TFS. Fortunately now TFS supports git, and I am able to leverage skills that I learn in off hours.
Well if you have made it this far, then I look forward to hearing from you in the comments as I start posting articles based on projects I am working on.
Thanks for visiting,
Jim Karnopp
I have worked in the IT industry for over 30 years. I have been a programmer, a SQL DBA, a system administrator, an email administrator, an internet infrastructure architect, and several other hats I am sure I am forgetting. I have been an independent consultant almost my entire career, so I have had a lot of variety in the work that I have done. The majority of my clients have been manufacturers of one type or another. Unfortunately I have never worked for a high tech software company, so I have always been in departments that are cost centers and not part of the revenue streams.
My current work is primarily developing web applications using the Microsoft .Net framework, angular, web api's, and SQL Databases. I have also been doing app development using the Ionic framework. I have been interested in getting more into the AI environment and work on real language user interfaces like chat bots and voice skills.
I end up bouncing between supporting older applications and SharePoint sites to doing new development, so it has been really difficult to keep my skills up to date. I spend a lot of my free time reading articles, going to user group meetings, and watching pluralsite and Udemy courses. They all help, but I never have the feeling like I have mastered topics the way I used to when I was younger. I read an article that suggested writing a blog as a way to share my work and get input from others.
I have written a lot of documentation over the years for my clients, but I haven't ever done much in public. I really should have done this a long time ago. It is never too late though, so I hope you enjoy the articles I post. I am hoping that by documenting things I am working on, it will help lock the concepts into my mind, and make me a better programmer.
I learned basic programming when I was 11 years old on my fathers TRS-80 (see personal blog article here), and I have been working with computers ever since. I ran a bulletin board service when I was a teenager using a Commodore 64 (see personal blog article here), and I got my first modern PC when I was in college and was forced to learn about hardware (see personal blog here).
My career started as mostly PC support as well as CAD support, then I started building PC's and network servers. I worked on development projects for quite a while as a network administrator and SQL DBA, but it wasn't until the web took off that I started really programming. In the early years most of my work was in classic ASP and PHP. I did some perl, Cold Fusion, and JSP. I loved learning new languages. When the .net framework came out, the companies I worked for were very slow to migrate to the new technology. I liked the new framework compared to the old style scripting, but I really wasn't a fan of web forms. My main customer also had a requirement that we do everything in VB which I was also not very happy with.
When MVC hit the scene, I started getting really excited about programming again. The IT management changed at my main customer and we had freedom to use new frameworks and start using C#. I started writing web application with MVC and entity framework. Being a DBA, I wasn't very comfortable with the code first approach, but once I got used to it, I started using it for everything.
Learning .net core has been another new challenge especially in a corporate active directory environment, but I like the lightweight aspect of it, and I love having the dependency injection built in. I have also really enjoyed working with the angular framework especially since it was rewritten in version 2. I am struggling with keeping up with all the open source tools, but with every project, I get better and better. For my own projects I use github, but for projects at my customer, we use TFS. Fortunately now TFS supports git, and I am able to leverage skills that I learn in off hours.
Well if you have made it this far, then I look forward to hearing from you in the comments as I start posting articles based on projects I am working on.
Thanks for visiting,
Jim Karnopp
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