About the author

Hi Everybody! (“Hi Dr. Nick“)

My name is Joel Coreson. I’m a [age = currentYear – 1977] year-old male living and working in beautiful Portland, Oregon, USA. I run a Web development firm with my business partner Morgan called Prise Design Group. That’s pronounced “priZe,” as in enterprise. Hmm, should one have to clarify the pronunciation of their business? Probably not … oh well 😉

We’ve been in business since 1998, but it’s been a full-time venture for me since 2003. I usually do the “geeky stuff” like back-end, database, programming and what-not while Morgan does the “snazzy stuff” such as design, graphics, logos, etc. It works out quite well. I think we do great work personally!

I try to shoot for semantic HTML and componentized, portable code. But I also live in the real world and will gladly compromise my ideals in order to get the product out the door.

Please don’t hate me, but I started out my programming career with ASP. Yeah, yeah, pipe down! I will provide only a sentence or two in ASP’s defense. Yes the platform of a Windows server is less then ideal. Yes IIS isn’t as slick as Apache. But let’s talk about the language. ASP can be written in either VBScript or “JScript” which is JavaScript. JavaScript is, IMO, a pretty nice little scripting language. It’s a hell of a lot more object-based than PHP, that’s for damn sure. You can create really nice, attractive code with ASP in JavaScript, which was my coding system of choice for years. The big issue for me and ASP isn’t with ASP at all. It’s with the mind set of the average ASP coder. First off, they almost all use VBScript which sucks (I’m not going to list the reasons here). And oh baby do these people mix programming logic and HTML every other damn line. There is no attempt to make functions or sub-routines or anything like that. Just lump it all together! This makes reading your average how-to ASP webdev site with examples or tutorials a pain. Oh, and people ask me about moving to dot NET. I feel it’s too much. I don’t want to learn a variant of C just to make a damn Web site.

With all that being said about ASP, I’ve moved to PHP for my primary language. Why? Because it’s free, and so is the server, and the operating system, and damn near everything else involved with it. I think it’s an OK language. I’m not a big fan of the “functions with really long names do everything for you” format, but it’s not like I lose sleep over it. You can’t beat the resources on the net either. PHP has a very active following, and that is important to me.
Apart from being a geek I also enjoy:

  • My wife Kate: Awwwwww.
  • Music: All types … no, really. Unlike other people who say “I like all music,” I actually mean it.
  • Friends: My wife and I are weird. We hang out with a tight-nit group of friends spanning from college, high school, jr. high, all the way back to — I’m serious — elementary school. Dubbed simply: “The Crew”.
  • Camping and Hiking: Easy to do in Oregon
  • Tennis: Not so easy to do in Oregon
  • Photography: Here are some random photos of mine on flickr.

I also like long walks on the beach, hot cocoa, and snuggling.

Ah, the internet. Has there ever been a better way to talk about yourself and masturbate your ego? I THINK NOT! Hope you enjoy the site. Post a comment or contact me if you like 🙂

Thanks,
Joel

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