Hello Steemit!

I guess I should probably start using this service. Luke Stokes has been talking about it forever, and at some point in 2016 was able to influence me to create an account.

Now in 2018 after his very passionate talk at SunshinePHP, I decided to actually use the account. I've dabbled in crypto-currency stuff in the past but never took a very deep dive into it for various reasons, but Steemit seems like a good fit.

Since this is my first post, let me introduce myself. My name is Chris Tankersley.

My tl;dr is that I am a father, husband, programmer, system architect, writer, speaker, and gamer.

I have been a professional programmer for about 12 or 13 years now at this point, primarily in PHP. I got started back in the early 90's programming BASIC on an old Tandy Color Computer III, writing programs out of magazines and books. From there I moved on to HTML and very basic Javascript in the mid-late 90's. My crowning achievement was a Final Fantasy VII fan website that was on one of the larger Final Fantasy web rings.

In high school I did a bit of perl before moving on to college where I learned C++, C#, VB.NET, RPG ILE, and COBOL. At that same time I started working at an ISP and one of my coworkers was a co-maintainer on a PHP project that was basically a PHP version of Slashdot. I found my favorite language at that point, and I've loved it ever since.

Since then the various jobs I've worked at have had me deal with golang, Python, C, more modern Javascript, and a few others. PHP, however, is the language that most speaks to me and the one I feel the most productive. Thanks to PHP I help maintain a static blog patform named Sculpin, am a Core Committee Member of the PHP-FIG standards group, have a library in a major framework, and have met a ton of great people.

In 2011 I had my first article published in php|architect magazine, based on a talk I had submitted to a conference. I have been writing off-and-on with them for seven years now, and currently have a monthly column with them on being a dev lead. I have also worked with them through their training platform, helping teach new developers PHP, Drupal, and secure programming.

Around 2014 I started speaking at PHP conferences. My first was Zendcon, and since then I have spoken around the country on a host of topics including Object Oriented Programming, Docker, security, best practices, and a whole host of other things. I most recently spoke at SunshinePHP where I talked about code optimizations and tools.

2016 saw my first actual book being released, "Docker for Developers". I had been following Docker for many years and had finally decided that it was a stable enough platform for me to write about and begin teaching. There is now a second edition of the book, a companion video series, and even a dead tree version through my friends at php|architect.

My good friend Gary Hockin and I co-host a video game podcast called Jerks Talk Games, a monthly podcast sometimes about a topic, sometimes about stuff we've been playing, and sometimes wrestling jokes. This has been one of my favorite projects to be involved in. Not only is Gary a great person to talk to, video games are one of my passions.

Maybe Steemit will revive my blogging. Or maybe I'll use this for my more non-technical things. Who knows?

If nothing else, thanks for reading.