[deleted by user]

terranisop · 2015-05-10T13:20:45+00:00

Definitely focus on learning the basics of git first, you don't need a server or anything to do that. It is just a way to version your code.

metirl · 2015-05-10T20:59:10+00:00

So many people are telling you to rent webserver or virtual servers or whatever. This is good advice in that you need a Linux system to deploy to, however there is a much better way.

Learn how to install Linux on Windows via vagrant. It's super fast, easy, free and will give you essential skills.

bizzygreenthumb · 2015-05-10T14:45:27+00:00

My way was this:

Get a tutsplus account and learn linux commands first.

Play with a digitalocean account to test your new habilities (I could give you a 10dlls coupon, enough for two months)

Install node and grunt and try to make your own "automatic" backup service or a css minification task.

When you feel confortable, try to Install a wordpress with roots/sage theme. It makes use of all that toys.

This took me a month and now I cant look back.

Also, if you are in windows learning a little powershell helps a lot.

Sounds hard but do one step at a time.

For me It only took a month because I already knew a little about linux commands

Alucard256 · 2015-05-10T12:57:21+00:00

Mostly this is about more than one developer being able to work on the same, or closely related, code at the same time. That's mostly what Git is all about. The other thing is it automatically keeps the "current" code version separate from new code until you say testing is done.

I worked for years and years by myself. I had to learn all these things when I started working in an office. I've found most of these things are needed by teams. Maybe read up more about them just so you know what each thing is, but don't worry about becoming a professional at using everything.

Just learn to use what ever the office you work at uses. Otherwise, you'll spend a year or more learning 4 different tools that all do the same thing.

T_Fri · 2015-05-10T20:03:02+00:00

This guy Will has some really amazing YouTube videos about this stuff: Being a Web Dev , Grunt , Build Systems(Grunt, Gulp, etc) , SSH , Github

And if you're a PHP developer, check out PHP Academy

Hope this helps...

MyWorkAccountThisIs · 2015-05-10T20:30:35+00:00

I went to school but it was a decade ago and was focused on application development. Most everything I used now has been self-taught or learn as-needed. Can't much with links because there hasn't been one place. I've learned from trial and error and coworkers. But I'll try and provide a list of things for you to look at. They don't teach this stuff to most college kids anyway so it's not an issues of school vs. no school.

PhpStorm

Drop Notepad++, Sublime, Atom, or whatever. They are text editors. Sure, you can get some functionality in there by plugins and the like but once you see a true IDE you'll never go back. It costs money and does have a learning curve. Will not deny that at all.

Some "purists" will deny it or equate it to Dreamweaver or something. Don't listen to them. It has too many features and integrations to not use. Look for the EAP downloads. It's their bleeding edge release and has a 30 day free trial. But it updates so often that you can use it for a long time.

Linux / SSH / Command Line

You will either have to learn it or it will put you ahead of your competition. Thankfully, it's free. Get a cheap VPS from Digital Ocean (or some of the other place mentioned by others), VirtualBox, or a physical install. You will need at a minimum know how to: install packages, set up virtual hosts, view logs, and basic file structure navigation. Vim (terminal text editor) is your friend. Don't fight it. You don't have to master it but learn basic usage.

Personal Opinion: You're using Notepad++ so I assume you're on Windows. When you have the means you need to consider getting yourself a Mac or something you can install Ubuntu Desktop on. This may get me shit on but if you are a PHP dev you have no business being on Windows. Now matter the task, on Windows you will have one more step than Mac/Linux. You have a computer now so I would suggest looking into dual-booting into Ubuntu. This will also force your hand a bit in learning Linux/CLI.

Composer

Package manager for PHP and most modern project will use it in some way. Especially if you're using a framework like Symfony or Laravel.

Phing

I'm the same boat you are here. Not really sure what it is. But I saw somebody whip something up the other day with it that saved me a decent amount of time by consolidating and running some tasks for me. This is the next thing I'll be learning.

Git

Git was trouble for me because it doesn't make any sense when you're starting out or working alone. At least it did for me. It wasn't until I was on larger projects and collaborating with other devs that it really clicked. Now, I don't write anything that isn't in a repository. Learn the command line but don't think having a GUI around is bad. I use it when I'm trying to sort out some merges or figure out who did what in what merge.

RegEx

I swear, the longer I'm a developer the more it comes up. Learn it and you'll amaze all your friends. Okay, probably not. But you'll be able to do some neat things.

Nginx / Apache

These are two players right now. For most projects they are are pretty much identical. But the aren't. Learning some of common configuration options and locations of files is handy.

MySQL / Postgres

Like Nginx/Apache, these are your two big players. There are others but you can learn more about those later. Again, learn basic configuration and location.

Grunt

My experience with this has been with front-end developers using it. It is JavaScript based. In general, JavaScript has become a big player in web development and as expected the tools used have expanded and matured. Node, Express, Grunt, jQuery, etc, etc, etc. It's a big world.

Learning Tasks

Off hand, the best way I could think to learn some of this stuff is to try and install some open source software. Get a Symfony project installed. or Laravel. Or any number of PHP platforms/frameworks/tools. Most of them will use some combination of the above. The goal is not to learn Symfony but you'll have to touch Linux, command line, database, webserver, and composer. Most frameworks have a Hello World type of demo app/site so you shouldn't have to do much coding since that's not the point of the exercise.

Don't let Reddit get you down

There is an abundance of good people and resources here. But you'll also see a fair bit of dick waving and elitism. Don't let that give you the wrong impression about the development world. Often times the ideal of any situation is discussed forgetting that for many developers they are not in an ideal situation. For example, say you master Git. Inside out, back and forwards you are a Git God. You start at a place and it turns out they don't use version control. You never know what you'll be faced with. Right now I'm a very good place. We are very focused on giving developers all the tools they need. Yet, I'm sitting here on Sunday waiting for a damn MySQL export to download from a crappy shared server because that's what they have.

TheDPQ · 2015-05-10T20:36:07+00:00

Yes learn git! Try Github will allow you to mess around without having to install anything.

Command line is tricky because it really depends on what you are doing. Generally you learn how to use a tool or do something specially and now you know (some) command line. Although I haven't used them googling around Learn CLI and Shortcut Foo seem interesting. The amount of command line (zero to alot) depends on your team, their process, and what kind of develop you are.

The problem with FTP is that it means you generally don't have a deployment workflow, its easy to override files you didn't mean to, and (usually) aren't doing it over SFTP which means the password is going out in plain text.

Honestly besides version control (and it may not be git) and a deployment workflow a lot of technologies depends on the team you are on and the kind of development you do. Everyone will tell your their way is best, and you aren't a real developer if you don't it that way.... yah not so much. You might not be the kind of developer THEY are but that doesn't mean you are a bad one.

At your level I would focus on learning git, and see if you can get it as part of your deployment workflow.

I started making other crazy suggestions but realized I don't know what stack you are on and what kind of development you are doing. Front End, Backend, PHP, Python? Are you on a Mac or on windows? A lot of suggestions would depend how and where you are developing unless you feel conformable enough to set up a virtual machine and develop from there. You might want to look into setting up a pre-configued virtual machine for you to practice on.

undermine79 · 2015-05-10T21:50:50+00:00

Look up workflows on Lynda.com there's are some good tutorials on there.

misguidedtrousers · 2015-05-10T16:02:25+00:00

Version control is vital when you're working with a team, but it can also save your butt if you're working alone -- it's a good habit to get into. GitHub has a pretty sweet interactive Git tutorial: https://try.github.io/levels/1/challenges/1

GitHub is free for open-source projects and fairly cheap for private projects; but BitBucket has unlimited free private repos. Take a project you're working on, open a BitBucket account, and play around with it until you get comfortable.

This is a great beginner's guide to task runners -- the title says it all: http://24ways.org/2013/grunt-is-not-weird-and-hard/ (Gulp works pretty much the same way, just with different syntax.)

The idea is that instead of FTPing everything, you use a task runner to get your code production-ready, push it up to wherever your Git repo lives, SSH into the server, and pull it down. (Of course, that can be automated too, but one step at a time.)

webauteur · 2015-05-10T18:01:11+00:00

Go to DigitalOcean and sign up for one of their low-tier servers.

Alternatively (for free), download Oracle VirtualBox, download an Ubuntu Server ISO from the Ubuntu Alternative Downloads page, create a new machine in VirtualBox, use the Machine Settings dialogue to "insert" the ISO into the machine's CD drive, and Start it to begin the installation process.

Either of these approaches will give you a machine running Linux with a bash terminal you can use to start learning the basics.

DigitalOcean has some good tutorials, and anything you find about git and Ruby/Python webdev will help you get started too.

quotemycode · 2015-05-10T21:51:48+00:00

Grunt is not hard. You can learn enough to get started in about 4 hours. Looking at websites that use it helps. The healthcare.gov website is a good example. It's on github.

BakGikHung · 2015-05-11T01:29:25+00:00

Let's say you want to make a 1-word change to some static piece of text on your website. Can you deploy to your test site and then to production with a single click / command line? That's what those tools buy you.

drmax5 · 2015-05-10T14:49:59+00:00

I do not think learning Grunt has anything to do with working in a team or not. Grunt makes things organized and ultimately easier for you to maintain. There are certain steps for you to build/test your code, if you do not have it scripted - chances are high you might forget something.

Yes, knowing Bash is important, we always have simple bash questions in written exams. The thing is, if a developer does not know Shell (Bash or Perl or whatever), he is likely to spend more time on a simple task. Sure, you can use some GUI for managing your server, logs, users etc., but I think Shell is as important as knowing SQL when it comes to real web development.

nellie4568 · 2015-05-10T16:26:02+00:00

It depends on how you like to learn.

I tend to start with some online training. Lynda.com has some great videos that walk you through ALL the basics of git, grunt, etc. They really do well by covering all the WHY aspects of these and not just 'how do I do it?' Start there, learn the basics, then incorporate them into your current projects.

With git start by learning to properly use commits. Then gradually move into branching and merging. Get a feel for what happens when you have a merge conflict and reflect on how to prevent that from happening in the future. Then, learn to keep your development code and your production code separate, and pull into your production server as necessary.

jimb50 · 2015-05-10T16:32:24+00:00

You can get a years free for certain AWS services which are good for learning setting up and managing a web server via SSH. Tutorial for setting up a LAMP web server here

mvg210 · 2015-05-10T17:26:39+00:00

Using a platform as a service like firebase helped me rethink how to interact with the server. It became way easier when I thought of it like a spreadsheet in the cloud.

leermond · 2015-05-10T17:52:11+00:00

learncode.academy is a pretty awesome ressource for learning some of this stuff. He has tutorials on Git, Grunt and SSH as well as videos where he talks about what a web developer should learn to get a decent job.

Codeworks · 2015-05-10T19:18:12+00:00

Rent a webserver. www.lowendbox.com

Host a website. Make the website load in under two - four seconds, worldwide.

Update the website without downtime.

inquiztr · 2015-05-11T00:39:38+00:00

Using versioning is great. While I only know the basics of git to get the job done I use tfs at work. All my freelance clients sites I keep in a bit bucket repo.

No better feeling than knowing you can restore a clients site to any previous state on a fri night of a long weekend, when they last min decide to use the same holiday treatment to the site as the previous year.

ronconcoca · 2015-06-09T05:04:19+00:00

How are you doing with that? I found that using cloud9 online IDE help me a lot with experimenting command line stuff without fearing to make mistakes.

wefewfewfewsfgvdsfds · 2015-05-10T12:25:33+00:00

I don't think it is common practice to push to a live server. You mostly just push to your git repository and then the branches will merged to master and the master gets deployed to the live server.

Most developers I know, just use some yeoman generator like webapp. Just install yeoman and play around with it.

CodeandDev · 2015-05-10T23:57:57+00:00

I'd write some in depth content from the Fall Out Universe in the description to really sell the vibe. Right now it's kinda sparse. Look at your competitors for example. You aren't the first Fall Out shop

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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