Heads up! To view this whole video, sign in with your Courses account or enroll in your free 7-day trial. Sign In Enroll
Well done!
You have completed The Treehouse Show!
You have completed The Treehouse Show!
Preview
Album Cover Art, Rock Music, and Small Business Apps with James Churchill
17:13 with James ChurchillWait until you hear your favorite C# teacher's origin story....
More James
Related Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign upRelated Discussions
Have questions about this video? Start a discussion with the community and Treehouse staff.
Sign up
Hi, I'm Craig,
welcome to the Treehouse Show.
0:00
The Treehouse show is our weekly
conversation with the Treehouse community.
0:02
In this episode, we'll be talking to the
host of the Dev Team Show, killer drummer,
0:10
and .NET Treehouse teacher,
James Churchill.
0:14
Thanks for being on the show James.
0:17
>> I'm glad to be here Greg.
0:19
>> I was wondering,
how did you get started in technology?
0:20
>> Well, how much time do you have?
0:23
>> Let's do the long version.
0:25
>> Okay, great, so
0:26
in my 20s I had been working at
a long term care pharmacy provider.
0:28
Which is kind of a dry, boring way of
saying that we filled prescriptions for
0:34
patients that were in nursing homes.
0:39
Started there as a driver, delivering
drugs, and then, [LAUGH] exactly.
0:42
In my Volkswagen beetle, no less.
0:47
>> [LAUGH] Nice.
0:48
>> And then as the company grew,
cuz we were really small, and
0:50
as the company started to grow, I learned
new positions and grew with them.
0:52
So I went from driving,
to helping stock shelves,
0:56
to learning how to fill prescriptions, to
learning how to enter prescriptions into
0:59
our console based computer
system that we used at the time.
1:03
>> Green screen.
1:06
>> Right, exactly, lots of typing, though.
1:07
That's where I learned how to re-type.
1:10
[LAUGH] And then eventually went on to
supervising a group of technicians,
1:12
did that for a couple years,
got super burned out.
1:17
I just was through with it,
and started to think about,
1:21
well, what do I actually
wanna do with myself?
1:24
After I've done that job for
eight years, time for something new.
1:26
So the two things I came up with was,
I had been doing some print designs,
1:30
sort of in my spare time, as a hobby.
1:34
And I thought that seemed interesting to
me, to change to doing something creative.
1:36
And I also thought about audio engineering
as well, which is something that,
1:41
I ultimately decided the print thing
would work out better for me, personally.
1:45
>> So I did that, and took a pay cut,
actually, to go take a job.
1:50
It was a very small company, we had maybe
20 employees here in the Portland area.
1:55
But privately owned, they brought me
in to start doing graphic design.
2:00
They did CD and cassette duplication for
local bands and small labels.
2:04
>> Okay, like to distribute?
2:09
>> Yeah, yeah, so bands would go into
the studio, make their recordings, and
2:11
then come to us and say, hey,
I want to make 1000 copies of this.
2:14
But we need packaging,
to make it look legitimate,
2:18
like something you could actually sell.
2:20
So I would sit down with them and
talk about like, well,
2:22
tell me about who you are, which your
music's like, and what you're looking for.
2:25
And they'd often give me photographs and
whatever else they had available.
2:30
And then I would sit down and
go off and design an album cover and
2:33
the packaging that went with it.
2:36
>> You designed the covers of,
what kind of music was this?
2:37
>> All kinds, in fact, that was
a really eye opening experience for me.
2:41
Because I had a lot of experience
with rock bands and rock music.
2:45
But my first job was completely in
Spanish, and it was a mariachi band,
2:48
which was just awesome.
2:52
It exposed me to this world, what I
had been aware of was a small sliver,
2:54
if you will,
of everything that is out there.
2:59
>> So you did a mariachi band,
do you have these album covers?
3:02
>> I do.
3:06
>> Can we go see some of them?
3:06
>> Sure
3:07
>> [MUSIC]
3:08
>> That's awesome, that is so cool.
3:53
>> Yeah,
keeping in mind that it's the 90s, so
3:56
maybe design aesthetics have
changed over time, of course.
3:59
>> That was killer in the 90's though,
I can see it, I see it.
4:03
>> Well, I never saw,
I was very much focused on it.
4:05
We were all about cranking things out,
to be perfectly honest,
4:09
even though we put a lot of care and
attention into it.
4:12
We were also trying to be affordable,
so it was, get the job done, but
4:15
get it done quickly.
4:19
>> Okay, gotcha.
4:21
>> So to that end,
yeah I was a good designer, but
4:22
I don't think I was a great designer,
to be clear.
4:25
But I did that for a number of years,
now we're kind of into the late 90s.
4:27
And I started my family, my son was born,
and we needed to make more money.
4:35
>> Okay, as you do.
4:41
>> So now, yeah, so now I'm like,
well, what am I gonna do now?
4:42
And I really liked what I was doing,
this creative process,
4:45
creating something from nothing.
4:48
And having been exposed to the early
beginnings of the internet by that time,
4:51
I thought,
4:55
digital design really seems like something
that would be interesting for me to do.
4:56
I did what made sense to me, I went and
bought a book, called HTML in 24 hours,
5:02
bought a computer.
5:07
I had a computer, but it was kinda cruddy,
and not really up to snuff, so to speak.
5:08
So I bought a new computer, sat down every
night after my wife and son went to bed,
5:13
and I did a chapter a day.
5:17
So in 24 days I learned about HTML,
well, HTML in late 90s right?
5:19
So I think it was HTML4 maybe,
I'm not sure, no CSS,
5:24
everything was attribute based.
5:28
>> And tables?
>> And tables, absolutely.
5:30
So I took my Photoshop skills
that I had learned and
5:32
honed over the years doing print design.
5:35
And combined that with what I knew
in HTML and a basic text editor,
5:37
and I was creating web
pages at that point.
5:41
>> Awesome, for who, for the-
>> Same company,
5:44
so I had the opportunity again to
grow within the small company.
5:47
And so we had a couple of other
people that were doing print design,
5:50
I was able to move out of doing that and
started doing this web design.
5:54
And at the same time I was also
doing some CD-ROM authoring,
5:57
which was small applications that
were very multimedia driven.
6:01
>> Right, cuz you used to
put the CD in and it would-
6:05
>> Right, right.
6:06
>> Cool, what was that written in?
6:07
>> We used a couple of different things,
so Macromedia Director,
6:09
which ended up eventually
becoming Adobe Director.
6:13
Which I think is still a product,
believe it or not.
6:15
So that was one way that
you would do it and
6:18
they had their own programming
language called Lingo,
6:20
which I would double in a do a little bit,
but if only I absolutely needed to.
6:23
>> I think Elena started in Lingo as well.
6:27
>> Yeah, she mentioned that to me.
6:29
And then I also did Macromedia Flash,
which went on to become Adobe Flash,
6:30
of course.
6:34
And I did a lot more ActionScript,
a lot of Flash development.
6:34
>> What sort of things were you
doing with that on these CDs?
6:38
So you put a CD in-
>> Yeah, different kind of things.
6:41
[CROSSTALK] Some stuff for bands, cuz
occasionally bands would come in and go,
6:43
hey, we need a website to help promote the
album that we're getting ready to release.
6:47
And people were very much thinking
along those lines in the early 2000's.
6:51
>> When you go to the webpage, and
the little video plays in the beginning.
6:55
>> Absolutely.
>> The loading, gotcha, okay, cool.
6:57
>> So, while I was doing that,
I was continuing to sort of push into web
7:00
design, but I really didn't
see myself as a programmer.
7:04
So I was doing what we would think
of today as frontend development.
7:08
>> Static.
7:12
>> Static, I'd write the HTML,
no database,
7:12
no data, nothing server-side even.
7:17
The ability to do any sort of logic,
or processing on the server and
7:21
return the response,
that was not in my realm.
7:25
And to that end, we were getting ready to
do an e-commerce website with the company
7:28
that I was working for.
7:31
And I was handling the look and
feel, the design side of it, and
7:32
we hired a consultant to come in and
do the backend programming.
7:35
And we worked together for about a month,
and at the end of that month,
7:38
when he was getting ready to leave,
he pulled me off to the side and said,
7:41
hey, we need to talk.
7:44
And I was like, okay, yeah, what about?
7:45
He's like, I've watched you work,
you'd make a great programmer.
7:48
Which was really like a revelation to me,
I was like, well, wait,
7:52
what do you mean by that?
7:55
Because to me,
even though I had taught myself design and
7:56
had learned those things.
7:59
There was this wall that I couldn't
see myself overcoming or going beyond,
8:01
because I wasn't a programmer.
8:06
And I also, oddly enough,
didn't see it as a creative endeavor,
8:08
which I was completely wrong about,
of course.
8:11
>> Why didn't you think you could
jump that wall, what was the wall?
8:14
>> I guess it felt too technical.
8:18
At the time I felt like,
well surely that's not something,
8:20
that's something people go to school and
learn to become an engineer.
8:23
It's not something you
would teach yourself,
8:27
you wouldn't teach yourself how
to become an electrical engineer.
8:29
So why would you teach yourself
to become a software engineer?
8:31
And it probably didn't help that my
brother had gone through school and
8:35
had become an electrical engineer,
and got his degree.
8:39
He minored in software engineering.
8:42
So, I had an example right in front of me,
so
8:43
to speak, I saw how that was done,
in the real world.
8:47
So it was just my view of the world,
if you will.
8:52
But this person gave me that push and
said, no,
8:56
just go read these books, which I did.
8:58
And man, it was an amazing experience,
because now I felt empowered.
9:01
Hey, I can do databases,
I can do server-side processing, and
9:07
I can own that entire process.
9:11
And all of a sudden, I began to see all
the ideas that I could do on my own,
9:13
the applications I could build,
and then I went off and did that.
9:17
And because of the small company, and they
had some other business endeavors they
9:21
were in, I started going to them and
saying, you know what you need?
9:24
Instead of using this Excel spreadsheet,
or doing this paper based process,
9:27
let's create an application.
9:31
So I started developing
these small business apps,
9:34
to basically make their
business processes better,
9:38
digital-based, accessible anywhere
they could get to it online.
9:43
>> That was huge in those days, right?
9:47
>> Huge.
9:48
>> You couldn't, the Excel spreadsheet,
you were stuck there.
9:49
But now you've made it so they can go home
and check when they need to, awesome.
9:52
>> Yeah, and centralizing their data so it
was easy to search through, and on and on.
9:56
Having, again, l was a one man show there,
[LAUGH] a one person show.
10:01
But they trusted me, and
l had a really great environment, l was so
10:08
lucky to have that, to be able to grow and
make a ton of mistakes.
10:13
People would say,
you taught yourself that?
10:17
Man, I think I've spent twice as many
hours as people probably spend when they
10:20
go through other ways of
educating themselves.
10:25
[LAUGH] It's the school of trial and
error.
10:27
>> School of hard knocks. [LAUGH] >>
Right, exactly, but yeah, super fortunate,
10:30
and I did that for about three years.
10:33
>> What was that language that
you were starting out there?
10:35
So I started with Microsoft's, and we
call it classic ASP, active server pages.
10:37
>> So that's right into it.
10:43
>> Right into it, and
10:45
it's so weird because I didn't
even really look around too much.
10:46
I was sort of aware that there
was this thing called Java,
10:49
but that seemed even less obtainable
[LAUGH] than what was in front of me.
10:51
So we had a Windows server, and
I thought well I'll learn that,
10:56
and so I was doing VBscript of all things.
11:00
I don't know why I chose that over,
cuz you could also use Jscript,
11:03
which was Microsoft's
version of JavaScript.
11:06
But I chose VBscript because it seemed
like the right thing to do, I guess.
11:08
But yeah, I did that,
I learned SQL Server, and
11:11
then eventually, around 2003
when .NET appeared on the scene,
11:14
and ASP.NET became the successor,
that was the natural progression.
11:17
>> So ASP.NET,
you teach that now here a bit?
11:21
>> Absolutely, yeah, so
.NET's been around for awhile, so
11:23
once I kind of made that jump into
the .NET world, I stayed there,
11:26
because it's rich, and really powerful,
and you can just do a lot with it.
11:30
I did lots of web development,
I went on and
11:34
eventually did some desktop
development using WPF.
11:37
Eventually came back and
learned ASP.NET MVC,
11:40
which is sort of the next version,
if you will, of ASP.NET.
11:43
As opposed to doing what we call web
forms, which we don't teach web forms here
11:48
at Treehouse, but we teach MVC,
which is more popular now than web forms.
11:52
>> Okay, cool, so you teach ASP.NET here,
you also host a show here.
11:56
Can we talk a little bit
about your show you host?
12:03
>> Yeah, so it's called the Dev Team Show,
and it's a show that,
12:05
we pick topics and talk about topics that,
12:10
we try to focus that on people who
are working developers, working on teams.
12:13
So we might talk about code reviews, for
12:18
instance, we have an episode that we
talked about hype driven development.
12:20
>> That was fun.
12:24
>> We talked about, recently,
QA testing automation,
12:25
the role of design in development,
just a variety of topics.
12:29
>> Cool, that's awesome, and now for
my favorite part of the show, James.
12:33
What is something that the students
at home might not know about you,
12:36
just by watching your content?
12:39
>> Well, so I mentioned earlier that
when I was doing pharmacy work,
12:41
that I was moonlighting and
doing print design.
12:45
And that was kind of just the off
the cuff comment, you might wonder, wait,
12:48
he was doing print design,
how did that get started?
12:50
It was really driven out of necessity.
12:53
So I'm a musician, I actually have
an associate's degree in music,
12:55
that's where my education is at,
is in music.
12:59
>> Cool.
>> And that in my 20s,
13:01
I was all about the music,
I was playing in bands, and
13:03
was working to really become discovered,
that was the goal.
13:07
>> Really, what sort of band were you in?
13:12
>> So the name of the band
was called Crying Shame.
13:15
Well, there was a band before that,
there was lots of bands.
13:19
>> [CROSSTALK]
>> When I graduated from high school,
13:21
I didn't go to college, instead, me and
my friends, we jumped in a van, and
13:25
we moved to California.
13:29
>> You hit the road, you lived the dream.
13:30
>> We played on the Sunset Strip in
Hollywood, I played at Kazari's,
13:32
Troubadour, the Whiskey,
all those clubs down there.
13:35
>> Woah, I've been all there, I've been
to all those places, that's awesome.
13:38
What kind of music is it?
13:41
>> So, we were like a late 80s hair band,
basically.
13:42
>> No, you were in a hair band.
13:44
>> Yeah, kind of hard to imagine, right?
13:45
>> [LAUGH]
>> But it's true.
13:47
>> That's amazing,
there's some photos of this.
13:49
>> There's lots of photos.
13:52
>> My gosh, I can't wait,
let's take a look.
13:53
>> Okay.
>> [MUSIC]
13:56
>> So how long did that last,
what happened with that?
14:30
>> So the whole reason why
I did the pharmacy work,
14:32
that was my day job,
that's what paid the bills.
14:35
>> So you could rock at night.
14:39
>> So I could rock at night and
on the weekends,
14:40
cuz we were doing original music.
14:43
Which your paying gigs, whatever money
you make funnels directly right back into
14:45
paying for your efforts, for recording, or
for promotion, then doing the next gig.
14:50
So it's a labor of love,
not a financial one, so to speak.
14:56
So yeah, that's what I did during
pharmacy, because it didn't fulfill me,
15:01
it wasn't a passion of
mine to do that work.
15:05
Then I was able to keep all that,
that part of me, from my music.
15:08
When I made the jump to
doing print design fulltime,
15:13
it was an interesting transition.
15:15
Because now I was spending
more of my waking hours
15:17
doing something that I really enjoyed,
and it wasn't just work.
15:20
>> That music led, that makes sense, now,
why you're doing these CD covers, okay.
15:25
>> Yeah, in fact, I got that job because,
and this is this is really great,
15:28
I got that job because I was doing
an album cover for a friend of mine.
15:32
He was in his band and
we had played together in other bands, so
15:36
he goes, hey could you do our artwork,
and I said sure.
15:40
And so I had Wednesdays off on the
schedule I had, and he said come on down,
15:43
we're gonna drop our stuff off.
15:46
And so I went with him, and
15:48
we went to the company that I
eventually went to work for.
15:49
And we're standing there in the lobby, and
15:51
they had a sign on their front desk that
says we're hiring a graphic designer.
15:53
And so I talked to the receptionist,
I said, well, I could do that job.
15:57
And she goes, okay, let me call the person
down who's in charge of hiring.
16:00
And he came down and we introduced
ourselves and he goes, well, so
16:03
where do you work now?
16:07
And I go, well I work at a pharmacy,
as a pharmacy tech.
16:08
And he's like, [SOUND] he goes well,
I don't wanna talk to you.
16:10
And I was like, well, I could do this job,
and he goes, [SOUND].
16:13
And he really just wouldn't
give me the time of day,
16:17
because I wasn't working full time doing
that, I didn't have any credibility.
16:20
So, he reluctantly took down my name and
number and then disappeared, and
16:25
I thought, well, I completely blew that.
16:28
There's not a chance they're
gonna follow up with me.
16:29
But a few days later,
another person called me and said, hey,
16:32
we've got a job for you.
16:35
Can you just do this contract work,
and I said, sure, I'll do that.
16:36
And the one thing I did that
made them give me more work
16:40
was when I said it would be done by
Wednesday, it was done by Wednesday.
16:44
[LAUGH]
>> Nice, deadlines.
16:48
[LAUGH]
>> It had almost nothing
16:49
to do with the quality of work or
how great it was.
16:51
It was that I did what I said I would do.
16:53
>> It was that you hit your deadline.
16:55
Nice, man, nice, that is awesome.
16:55
>> [LAUGH]
>> Thanks for watching the Treehouse show.
16:58
To get in touch with the show,
reach out to me on Twitter, or
17:05
hit us up in the Treehouse community.
17:07
See you next time.
17:09
My neck is so
sore from all that head banging.
17:10
You need to sign up for Treehouse in order to download course files.
Sign upYou need to sign up for Treehouse in order to set up Workspace
Sign up