My next weekend domain development project(s)

As many of you know, with the extra time I’ve had on the weekend due to our “Shelter in Place” order here in San Francisco I’ve been doing a bit of development, taking some fun MasterClasses and coding classes, and amping up my Japanese studying.

While I definitely miss my normal weekend hikes and travel adventures I’ve been having a blast learning new things. For those who know me well you know that I don’t really watch TV or sports, so that has always freed up some extra time for learning. And with over a month in quarantine I’ve found I have about an extra 20 hours every weekend so I’ve been doing my best to make the most of my time.

This weekend I’m going to do two different development projects and I’ve budget a total of two hours, one hour each. When you’re doing no-code development it’s easy to get something up and running, and no, you don’t have to build a complete site that’s perfect right away, getting something up is all you need to get the ball rolling.

My first development project I discussed in my blog post yesterday, I’ll be building a static website using Webflow. The domain I’ll be building out with this is SearchOptimized.com, to start with I’ll make a quick information site about SEO.

The second development project I’ll be doing is a WordPress blog about learning how to code in COBOL. I know what you’re probably thinking…wait, who the heck wants to learn COBOL now? Well it turns out that this ancient programming language is now in high-demand as states struggle to get systems built with it to handle the new volume they’re seeing.

Some states have found themselves in need of people who know a  60-year-old programming language called COBOL to retrofit the antiquated  government systems now struggling to process the deluge of unemployment claims brought by the coronavirus crisis. (Source – Fast Company)

I thought it would be fun to take a little COBOL course this weekend – I love learning new programming language and a legacy language like this should be interesting to dive into. Along the way I thought why not take notes and share them on a blog. I was able to hand-register LearnCobol.org and that’s where the blog will live.

Like I said above, this isn’t something I’m going to be spending all weekend on, instead I’ve given myself two hours total to get both off the ground. With SearchOptimized.com I’m really just playing around with Webflow so using it as a way to learn more than anything. With LearnCobol.org, well, I’ve been coding for over twenty years now, love learning new languages and I could see myself having fun writing some articles about Cobol and opening it up to the community for others to share what they know as well.

It does look like there is a strong demand for COBOL developers now who also know Python, C, C++, and Java, and since I already know those four, adding one more to the list seems handy. Okay, now enough blogging, I’ve got a COBOL class to take!

Morgan Linton

Morgan Linton