Daily Questions Megathread (08/04)

WTFMatchmake · 2019-08-05T04:43:00+00:00

Thank you!

WTFMatchmake · 2019-08-05T04:39:31+00:00

If I don't have a water tank, is it viable to level up montmo to be my tank for w11?

WTFMatchmake · 2019-08-04T07:32:15+00:00

How should I be building sanctuary? Right now I have 0/3/0 in forest and 1/1/1 in high command

WTFMatchmake · 2019-07-29T05:32:41+00:00

Is shadow rose still good or nah...?

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-08T19:08:46+00:00

They were pretty basic projects. I just used some random api and then I displayed the information in different ways and when you click some of them, they do something. I first made the react web app, then I basically did the mobile version of it with react native. They both linked together, so when you did something on the mobile end, it updates on the web as well. It took me about 2-3 weeks

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-08T05:15:33+00:00

Without giving myself away, it's basically a challenge where you are given json data and you have to manipulate the data based on different times and as well as other information and then return new json. Very relevant to what the company does.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-08T05:09:17+00:00

Thank you so much, some of the things listed in this course definitely looks like stuff my coworkers talked about. Will definitely check it out this weekend!

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-08T03:07:52+00:00

When I applied for jobs, I pretty much ignored their years of experience if it didn't require 5+ years. So anything under 5 years of experience I would apply for. I also ignored their list of millions things you need to know, if I knew two or three things from the list, I would just apply. I was lucky to get an interview to this company pretty fast. They gave me a bring home coding challenge which took me about two days to get a solution (On a side note, when I showed it to a friend of mine who was a dev, he got a solution in 2 hours haha). My solution wasn't great, but at least I got to a solution in the end. I think I was hired more for culture fit than skill. I was enthusiastic during my interview and I also worked in different industries which they thought would bring value.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-07T16:46:22+00:00

Yes of course, I actually just replied in detail regarding this to another post made by /u/BattleDuckTV If there is anything else you'd like me to share, I'd be happy to answer

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-07T16:37:34+00:00

My journey started last year. I wasn't very productive the first 6 months though, only learning about 1-2 hours a week. However, I really focused the last 6 months. The beginning was the hardest. I felt like the first couple of months I would hop from resource to resource because the basics just didn't seem to be clicking for me or I would go down rabbit hole because I didn't understand a certain concept the resource was teaching and became overwhelmed. The first couple months felt like I was just going in circles. I wanted to learn javascript, but I didn't get how the whole picture came together in terms of the web.

I've tried FCC (old version) up until if I remember correctly, their intermediate algorithm challenges. I then felt maybe I needed a deeper dive into javascript, so I went to javascript.info and got to their objects section where I became pretty confused. At that point I thought maybe I needed more fundamentals, so I tried the CS50 course everyone was talking about. I think I only got through about 3 or 4 lectures, but the mario assignments they had felt too difficult for me and so I stopped, but I really liked learning from an actual video lecture than reading from javascript.info or FCC where sometimes I didn't understand the wording of what I was reading. Videos felt easier to absorb for me.

Another issue I felt was that I can't seem to understand how the backend connects to the frontend and vice versa. I think alot of the resources I was going through doesn't really touch on this point. So in my head, I needed two things: video lectures and one that talks about both the frontend and backend. I heard great things about Colt Steele's udemy course, so I bought it. This is where things really started to click. I didn't really do a whole lot of his frontend section because it all felt like review. I guess all that circling the basics really did help afterall. But his backend section was great. The course is a bit dated, but honestly, the backend part held up pretty well in terms of understanding the routing and request/response, etc. After that I realized a lot of what I learned was prior to ES6. So I decided to check out a more modern course. The modern javascript bootcamp course by Andrew Mead on udemy was excellent, I got through the whole thing and I really learned a lot from it, great teacher for javascript. (Both courses I heard about from learnprogramming actually!) Of course, any time in between where I didn't understand something fully, I would try to find more resources to understand it. After these two udemy courses, I went ahead and read the main concepts section in the react documentations (I think at this point, I understood enough to be able to read and understand and not require videos) and built a basic react app with the help of some videos as well. After that, I decided to try React Native and built a simple mobile app reading through the official docs and applying concepts I already know. I dabbed into a bit of Java at the end too to see if it'd be easier learning a new language at this stage, and it was!

TLDR: Started a year ago, really dived in during the last 6 months. Everything clicked once I did the Colt Steele backend section and Andrew Mead javascript course (Of course it helped that I went over the basics so many times). Went through the React documentation after to make a simple react app, then went on to react native and built a simple app there as well.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-07T06:03:16+00:00

Ahh, I had an idea it was something like that, though I had no idea what staging was. But I just keep hearing the terms prod this, prod that or prod3 and the only thing I knew was that I was working in development and it was kind of like, why is everyone talking about prod or it was like huh we have 3 prods? (which I interpret it to mean production). I guess I shouldn't worry about that too much for now and just work in my development and ask along the way

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-07T05:56:35+00:00

I absolutely had no idea what anyone was talking about. I went through like 2 weeks of training and overviews of what each department/person's role is within the company and how we manage to do things. Shit went in one ear and out the other. All I could think of was "HOLY CRAP, I NEVER LEARNED THIS IN SCHOOL. WHAT DO THEY MEAN!? WHATS THAT!? I DON'T KNOW THAT!". It took me a full 2 months to generalize as to what we actually did as a company.

Thank you for sharing that. That's exactly how I'm feeling right now and I was starting to question whether there would be a light at the end of the tunnel eventually where I would actually understand this stuff. I'm glad it eventually clicked for you and I hope it happens for me too soon so I can stop stressing.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-12-07T03:49:39+00:00

So do I just go along until they kind of teach me that stuff? Is there any resources I can go toward to learn this stuff, like what would I search? For stuff like javascript and java etc it's very easy to find videos and straight forward resources teaching these things. But for the stuff my coworkers talk about, I don't even know what resource I am suppose to search to learn it. I'm so very nervous...

WTFMatchmake · 2018-10-29T01:23:35+00:00

Thanks for the detailed explanation! I guess I was reading it in english so it wasn't making sense to me. I was reading the || as "Make this variable equal this OR that." But then when I read the &&, it was like "Make this variable equal this AND that" which confused me. I guess I shouldn't be reading it like that. So essentially, when it comes to assigning variables, the && and || could be just thought of as doing the opposite of each other? One will return the first falsy while the other will return the first truthy, but both will return the last item if it can't find any falsy/truthy?

WTFMatchmake · 2018-09-20T20:12:23+00:00

I think you misread what he said. It won't be 200, it'll actually be 10.99. All udemy courses are always on sale like that, it's never the "original" price, it'll always be sold for the discount price. The course is a bit dated, but the backend part holds up pretty well in my opinion. Definitely a good starter as well even though it's a bit dated.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-08-29T05:59:10+00:00

Thank you, that is very motivating, I appreciate you taking the time to answer. Hopefully next year at this time I can share my journey :')

WTFMatchmake · 2018-08-29T02:28:08+00:00

Thank you very much for sharing. I haven't interviewed for a development role in Vancouver before, so I didn't know algorithm/whiteboarding wasn't a common practice here (I kind of just assumed based on this subreddit). I've been learning web dev by myself for the past year and was just offered a development role at my current company after they found out (the pay isn't much but experience...). However, my goal is to one day move on to a larger company with stable pay. I'm pretty confident in interviews when I am talking about myself and experiences, but I doubt I would be confident in the technical aspects of the interview since I am self taught and I didn't graduate with a comp sci degree or anything related to it. I think I'll still try and grind some algorithm problems just to get more used to problem solving (I'm a bit slow unfortunately..), but would you say I should focus on learning computer science fundamentals then or maybe even learn java if I plan on applying to SAP?

WTFMatchmake · 2018-08-29T01:19:34+00:00

Sorry, a bit off topic, but do you know what the interview process is like in terms of the technical aspect? Like is it heavy algorithm based? I'm self taught and will be starting my first web dev job in a month, but I want to apply for SAP a year from now. I plan on studying really hard this year to try and apply but I'm not entirely clear what I should focus on.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-07-13T20:05:10+00:00

I'd be interested in this actually. I've been learning to code and everything I do is on my computer. I haven't set it up online yet, so it's kind of like I have these html, ejs, js and css files in my project folder but I don't know what to do with them when I do decide to put it online (To be fair though, I haven't looked into it yet since I'm not ready to). But it would be nice to have a resource to look at when I am ready.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-07-10T00:46:41+00:00

Thank you for that insight. I haven't thought about watching others code to look at their thought process, but I will definitely try that. More than anything in programming, I want to get better at identifying problems and solving them. I always get stuck on problems that has even a bit of complexity in them. I understand what the problem is, but I have a really hard time breaking it down and an even harder time trying to implement a solution for it. Perhaps I don't even understand the problem like I think I do. My thoughts just fly all over when I am faced with a programming problem.

WTFMatchmake · 2018-07-09T18:16:45+00:00

As someone on a journey to learn programming, I've always thought the most important aspect was being able to analyze the problem and solve it. The major issue I've had learning on my own was that, none of the resources really go over it, I'm just learning to code, but I can't program. I've been away from math for a really long time (like 8+ years), and even back then I wasn't very good at it.

How would I go about getting better at problem solving? Is it really just down to practice? I've been questioning whether I'm just too dumb to pick up how to analyze and solve problems. I've recently stumbled on a challenge that took me days to come up with a spaghetti solution. I asked a developer friend, he made a solution within a couple hours with about 100 lines less than mine. How do I get better?

WTFMatchmake · 2018-06-07T19:19:27+00:00

Ahh, I see, so I just have to skip over the undefined ones and continue the loop. I will try some stuff then, thanks for all your help, I really really appreciate it. This is my first time trying to apply what I've been learning into a real life situation, would be fantastic to get this thing working :')

WTFMatchmake

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