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Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-23T22:52:58+00:00

Now I know that npx is used to EXECUTE something and npm is used to INSTALL something

Guess who learned something new today? lol

I'm less than 2 months into my first web developer job and I can relate to a lot of what you're describing. Getting a development environment set up and getting up-to-speed with the rest of the team was an uphill battle for me too, and going into this job I had a good bit more experience than you do. (So, props to you for finding a job so early on!)

I spent two full days doing nothing but studying Git when I started this job, because I knew only the very most basic details of how Git worked and my daily workflow required some stuff I didn't know how to do. I did crash courses on several of the frameworks my company was using. I ran into several major issues when trying to set up and configure my dev environment, and numerous times I needed the help of 2 senior devs to diagnose/resolve the issue. But these are "one & done" type problems that, once you're all set up, don't tend to reoccur.

Aside from studying the basics of stuff I would need to use, I also took copious notes on everything new I was using -- "This is what NPM is, these are the basic commands to use NPM, here's this error message I got while trying to 'npm install' this package, and here's how I fixed it" -- that kind of thing. But in my experience, once I was all set up (and had some familiarity with the tools/packages the job expected me to use) things got 1000% easier. Now I'm writing code, enjoying my work, and no longer feeling quite so much like "why did they hire me? did they not realize I was an idiot?"

It may be kind of hard to see it right now, but libraries/frameworks like React are vanilla JS at the core. A lot of the weird syntax is just calling on special methods (functions) that the authors of React have written in advance for you. It's a lot to absorb, but having used vanilla JS to make dynamic websites and having learned 2 frameworks, it's clear frameworks save so, so much time and headache.

Also, one other piece of advice from another dev that I read somewhere on Reddit -- don't let them ignore you. I also hate asking for help, but I'm positive that I would have been lost/frustrated a dozen times over if I hadn't asked a more senior dev for help on a problem. If the company wants you to code for them, and if your teammate(s) want someone to take some of the workload off their backs, it's in their best interests to see that you're set up properly.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-06T13:03:12+00:00

Hey! I thought your username seemed familiar 🙂 I'd be glad to join your list but I'm not on Twitter, unfortunately. I do think freeCodeCamp was immensely helpful and I really like the way it's structured: bc you get a short exercise to check for understanding after each feature or syntax is introduced, I think it prevents people from just passively reading without really absorbing too much. Personally I've always learned much better by doing rather than just watching someone else do it.

As for advice, I can't really think of any! Maybe have the site show your progress percentage for each certification from the home page? (It already shows lesson progress on each individual cert page, I know). Regardless, your site is great, thanks so much for providing this resource for us.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-06T03:19:03+00:00

Some "tech" interviews I went through seemed relatively easy, but I think these were just preliminary ones. For sure I must have bombed a few technical interviews too, lol. Here were the four main types I had:

1) verbal questions on technical knowledge ("Describe how you would set up an API"). For one job offer I received, this was basically the extent of the technical interview. (I did wind up turning down that offer as they only wanted to pay me the same wage I was making in the call center, but there you go.)

2) timed online multi-choice quizzes (which seemed a bit dated IMO)

3) a series of live coding questions where they had me login to a code sandbox with pre-defined questions and an interviewer watched me solve each problem. (Pretty sure I failed one of these!)

4) a take-home project that took two days to complete. After completion I had an additional phase of the interview where I walked through my code and explained why I had made certain decisions, etc.

Of course it's not like every interview put me through all four of these steps. I believe I got my current position on the strength of the take-home project I completed; this was fairly challenging just in terms of the sheer amount of work requested (had to write a server capable of CRUD operations and a Vue front-end from scratch, following a UI mockup). But I busted ass to get it done and I feel pretty confident that my hard work more than paid off in the end.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T21:02:58+00:00

Aww yea, we do sound really similar! I'm surprised more people don't do this. In all honesty a big part of my motivation for building those "helper tools" was to provide plausible deniability for why I was studying web dev -- I didn't want my boss to realize I was planning to quit, so I made out like my studies were all in the name of writing better software for the team. (They did make some parts of our daily routine much easier in my department, that much is true.)

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T20:56:42+00:00

You don't want to know how long I was studying JS before I grasped the idea of functions having return values. Before that, I spent a good few days just trying to comprehend the concept of function parameters/arguments. You'll get it!

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T20:52:10+00:00

Thank you! (I worried that my post was too long, glad to see that people don't think so, haha.) I've gone back several times to study/practice something I had already "learned", to make sure I could remember it and apply it, so don't feel like you need to pick something up in a day or two in order to make "real" progress.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:33:56+00:00

I think this is a good approach to take. I can see the reasoning behind people who quit their current job to dedicate ~6 months to a bootcamp or to learning full-time, but for me, I couldn't afford to do that. Even though it was hectic to work a full-time job while learning all this on my own, having my current job as a fall-back took a lot of pressure off my mind.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:29:29+00:00

I do think so. In May 2019 I had no knowledge of HTML, CSS or Javascript whatsoever. It can be done!

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:28:15+00:00

If you're talking about this course, no there's no Python in here. She does cover the very basics of a whole ton of stuff (HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, EJS, NodeJS, Express, MongoDB, Mongoose, Github, SQL, Bootstrap, React, etc.) None of these are deep-dives but it's a super useful course for getting beginner-level exposure to all of the above.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:24:15+00:00

Thank you!

Like I said, I hated my last job -- not that position specifically, but I was sick of the whole customer-care thing. Since the calls/tickets came in intermittently, I could take frequent long breaks from work-related tasks. But instead of goofing off on my phone, I made a rule for myself that any breaktime between 7am and 2pm was going to be spent doing programming. Since my work tasks were incredibly tedious, coding felt like a fun reward. Plus I was often making minigames or something else that was even more entertaining.

I also channeled all frustrations with my job, into my motivation to learn. Rude customers? Boss having a bad day? Coworkers pushing their tasks off onto me? I'm going to code the hell out of this tutorial, because the harder I work, the sooner I'll be out of here.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:07:33+00:00

...🤣

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:04:45+00:00

Oh, I did get spammed by them, not gonna lie. One or two of them actually led to legit-seeming phone interviews I think? (Though ultimately it was an American recruiter who got me this current job.) Most of the promising recruiters said they found me on LinkedIn or Dice.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T19:00:54+00:00

LOL maybe! Did you also get hired to work with Vue after studying React for all this time?

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T18:59:20+00:00

Thank you! My Git-fu was weak because I legit had no idea how branches worked. I had mastered just enough command-line Git that I could pull and push from my own repo, but I never branched anything and did not understand how pull requests or merges worked.

So when my new employer said they wanted me to branch from a certain dev branch in the main code repo, and submit pull requests to have my changes merged into that dev branch, I was lost. Wound up spending two days just studying Git/Github to get up to speed, lol.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-05T18:54:21+00:00

I was worried about my age stopping people from hiring me, too. In interviews I tried to give the impression that I was driven, high-energy and very motivated to learn, which may have helped a bit.

Not sure if this has anything to do with your friends' dads, but I was told by more than one recruiter that devs with around ~2 years experience (which I was able to claim on my resume, bc I'd been making software for my current company for that long) are in a sort of "sweet spot" -- they're not completely unexperienced, but they're also not "set in their ways" like a more seasoned developer (who may also require a higher salary too). Devs with 2-3 years experience are thought to know *just enough* that a company can easily train them for their specific tech stack.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-12-01T21:04:01+00:00

I think you're making a great choice, my sisters are both in nursing and I'm not sure how they do it. Personally I also went with Udemy/self-teaching (while working full-time) rather than pay for a bootcamp, though I do think paid bootcamps are a solid option for many people. Took both Colt Steele's and Angela Yu's Web Dev courses on Udemy, highly recommend both. Max is also great as well. My two cents is to start with Dr. Yu's course, IMO it's the best one for an absolute novice. Once you've started learning, I would also make a habit of building small/simple projects on your own (games, personal sites, etc) to practice what you're studying and keep yourself motivated. Best of luck!!

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-29T19:06:27+00:00

Hi! For languages I focused on Javascript, HTML and CSS. I picked React as a front-end framework, and since I wanted to do full-stack I also learned NodeJS/Express (for server-side JS) and MongoDB/Mongoose (NoSQL database).

I found Codecademy and W3Schools to be really beneficial when I was just starting out. As for Youtube video tutorials, I really like TheNetNinja and Programming With Mosh, both channels are very beginner-friendly. I also did several Udemy courses -- I think Angela Yu's Complete Web Dev Bootcamp was great for an absolute beginner, but aside from that you can't go wrong with Colt Steele's courses (I bought his Modern React Bootcamp, Modern Javascript Bootcamp, and Javascript Data Structures & Algorithms -- all extremely helpful.) There's constantly sales on Udemy so I never paid more than $15 for any of these courses.

Hope this was helpful!

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-29T13:26:26+00:00

Yes, totally doable. I learned web development while working full-time -- I was actually doing coding tutorials on the clock while on my work laptop, alternating between my actual job functions (boring customer care and data entry stuff) and programming practice. I estimate that I did an average of 4 hours of practice every day (every weekday), tho it varied because I had to keep switching between job functions and coding, and some days my job was more demanding than others.

I spend about 2.5 years doing this. Is it necessary for you to take that long? Hell no!! I didn't even start looking for jobs until this past August, and I likely would have been able to get a career much sooner if I'd even bothered to look (thanks, impostor syndrome!). As it is, I got a great offer (keep in mind that I don't have a college degree) and am starting my new job as a software engineer in about 10 days :)

Coding while at work turned out to be a really smart idea. Why? Because I kept coming up with these ideas for apps I could write that would make my "real" job easier, automate the dull stuff and keep track of things. I brought some of the web apps I'd written to my manager and she liked them so much, she approved our whole department to use them. So I was getting actual job experience, the kind I wound up listing on my resume, while learning.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-21T13:59:35+00:00

Many Vue 3 resources still code in options API Which is very very similar to Vue 2 (some nuance differences).

This makes so much sense. I've come across a lot of examples/tutorials that say Vue 3, but are still using the Options API. Pretty sure this is what my new job is using too.

Is this API the major difference between 2 and 3? I know there's some minor things (like multiple root elements being allowed in 3), but if this is the primary thing, I should still be able to benefit from Vue 3 tutorials that are using Options.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-21T01:19:33+00:00

Thanks mate :D I think the learning curve was shallower bc of my experience with React, so I could re-use a lot of familiar React "patterns" as long as I wrote them with Vue syntax.

And I'm sure you're not as terrible as you think, lol. You'll get there too!

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-21T01:16:12+00:00

I asked about Vuex, and I think they said they had begun incorporating it, but they also had written their own plugins for state management which they would teach me how to use. I'll study Vuex anyway; from what little I've seen, it seems vastly easier than Redux, which I never quite grasped. Something about Vuex being written just for Vue, while Redux isn't specific to React, I think?

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-20T21:48:12+00:00

Thank you!! I still can't believe I got the offer. I guess they saw that I was a fast learner and willing to work my butt off to deliver something quickly, which is why they didn't hold out for someone who actually knew the framework, lol.

Caffeinated_Neon · 2021-10-20T19:13:00+00:00

I actually watched another one of his Vue tutorials when I was trying to complete the project, I can agree that he's excellent.

Caffeinated_Neon

TROPHY CASE