This weeks interview is with Stuart Gibson, a web developer from Northern Ireland. Stuart\'s the brains behind the popular Twitter service, TwitLonger

1. First of all introduce yourself to our readers. Who are you and what is it that you do?

My name is Stuart Gibson, I'm a freelance web developer working mostly in PHP. I'm the developer of http://www.twitlonger.com which lets you post longer messages to your Twitter account and is integrated in several popular Twitter clients including Twitter and Twittelator.

2. How did you get into the web development industry and how long did it take you to get to where you are today.

I made my first web site back in 1997 when I went to uni, originally to study psychology. One year in and I made the switch to Applied Computing and spent my time when I was supposed to be doing uni work learning PHP, standards compliant HTML & CSS and studying usability & accessibility. I left university just as the Internet bubble burst and spent far too many years working in non-web dev jobs. About two years ago I decided it was time to get back to doing what I love and, through the power of Twitter, made some great contacts that allowed me to do this full time.

3. What server-side language do you work with most and why?

PHP. I learnt to code in C/C++ originally and, syntactically, PHP is pretty close. Its open source nature means there are loads of great frameworks like Code Igniter and CakePHP and the community is second to none. Despite some rather glaring holes in the language that make it easy to get into trouble or write bad code, the functionality built into the language makes rapid development easy and, with a bit of experience, writing good code isn't difficult.

4. Are there any languages you would like to learn or wish you had learnt sooner?

I keep meaning to sit down with Ruby/Rails as there are quite a few people locally that use and love it so it would be a great tool to add to the arsenal. I'd love to have the time to get my Cocoa skills up to scratch. I love writing server backends to integrate with iPhone apps, so being able to do the device coding too would be handy. Plus, everyone knows that iPhone developers are all multi-millionaires.

5. Is there something you would do different if you were just starting out today?

Be more confident and pushy. I'm naturally pretty shy, but work doesn't come and find you, you need to get out there, make contacts and actively look for it. I'd probably have started using frameworks a lot earlier too instead of being fanatical about writing every line of code myself.

6. Do you enjoy what you do? What is it you like about web development.

I've always been a bit of a computer nerd. I got my first computer (an Amstrad CPC464) for my sixth birthday, so being able to do what I love is wonderful. Working freelance is also great. It gives you the freedom to work when you want and fit the job around the family, not the other way round. For a while I was getting up at 5am and getting client work done by lunchtime, giving me the afternoon to work on personal projects. I love web dev because it's always changing, there's new things to learn and it gives you great freedom to experiment.

7. What tools do you use on a daily basis and couldn't live without?

Macs all the way. I have a Mac Mini hooked up to a 30" screen I use as my main development box and a 13" MacBook Pro for out and about and sofa work. I do all my coding in Coda from Panic Software http://www.panic.com/ (as well as using Transmit for FTP duties). It's a really beautiful text editor and makes handling sites so easy. Although it has Subversion support built in, I also use Versions (http://www.versionsapp.com/) for big SVN jobs (yeah, I'm not much one for the terminal I'm afraid). I recently switched from Opera to Safari as my day to day browser, but always have a copy of Firefox with Firebug about for debugging purposes.

Oh, and Spotify to keep me going through the day :)

8. Do you have any advice for our readers just starting out in the industry?

Get out there and meet people. There are likely a ton of events locally - find out if there's an Open Coffee group, they are great to meet those already in the industry. If you want a job it helps if those who are likely to offer you one know who you are.

Make something of your own. The biggest complaint I hear from potential employers is of people coming in with a portfolio comprised of nothing but university assignments. If you're not passionate enough about web development to want to do it whether you're getting paid or not, people will wonder why you're applying to do it as a job.

If you're a developer, get friendly with a good designer, don't think you can muddle through. Know where your skills are and work on those.

9. Finally, where can we see your work and get in touch?

All my details and everywhere I can be found are available at http://www.imetstuart.com Mostly I can be found on Twitter as @stuartgibson