Of old and new friends

For Independence day celebration, I got the chance to get in touch with an old friend and visit a new friend.  :)

My old friend and I met at Starbucks Gateway to hang out and chat about his thesis topic.  We talked about HR systems, about 37signals, project management, freelancing, etc.  I felt really great about trying to explain to him the latest trends in programming and my IT career.  He's been completing his bachelor degree so, though he's only a year younger than me, he's still in school right now.  He stopped for quite sometime then went back to schooling.

He's more into Java right now, but since his thesis might probably end up in a web development, he's more open to coding in PHP.  I suggested he use Cake for a framework since its a bit closer to Rails style development.  It'll probably set a familiarity and edge for quick shifting to Rails.  Ruby is not a hard language to learn, so I strongly believe he'll be able to jump in right away.

After meeting up with him, I visited a fairly new friend and watched Karate Kid (which should really be "Kung Fu kid") then had a quick dinner.

I'm really glad getting in touch with them after some time has passed.  Glad they still treat me as a good friend, though I've been missing in action for quite a long time. :D