It’s been a long time coming, and I’ve wasted entirely too much time on stop-go, scrap, rebuild shenanigans, but now the groundwork is finally done and MattVanAndel.com is live… mostly.

If you’ve already looked around you may have noticed that I list both PHP and C# (.NET) among my primary focuses (the other being JavaScript/AJAX). Some may call this paradoxical. I, however, do not. Both languages have their uses and their strengths, and I’ve never been one to balk at whatever tool gets the job done best. This very site is a testament to that mindset. When I first began to play with the idea of blogging, I settled pretty quickly on ASP.NET + AJAX as my focus but ironically, when it came time to pick a framework to build on, is was Wordpress that wound up being hands-down, no-question-about-it the best choice for running a blog. And if you haven’t already guessed it… it’s built on PHP.

That got me thinking… why not focus on both? I prefer to work with .NET and I’m not shy about saying it… generally, it let’s me do a whole lot more in a lot less time, and I’m all about whatever makes me more productive… BUT, in the case of this blog, PHP was the more productive option as I could simply build on top of an preexisting mature, full-featured piece of open-source software.

See how that works? There are different tools for different jobs and the language is only another tool. No paradox at all.

Of course, there are other concerns when picking any tool – language included – but that’s a topic for another post. My point is this – this blog exists to help you, oh reader, pick the best tools for your own development jobs. Whether it be languages, tips, techniques, tutorials, or software, I hope you come away from this site each time more knowledgeable than the last.

And if you feel I get something wrong – let me know and I’ll change it. I have no qualms about rewriting entire posts if there’s a better way to do or say something. And if there’s anything specific you want me to talk about, by all means hop over to the Contact section and ask. It’s not like my cup runneth over with readers, so I’ll do my best to answer anything that comes my way.