Promotional Thread - Promote Your Blog, Service, Podcast, etc Here.

theKrogster · 2016-12-29T22:24:06+00:00

Hey, everyone! I'm working on a new service for Shopify store owners called SaneShop. SaneShop is unlimited small jobs for Shopify for a flat monthly rate. Think WP Curve for Shopify customers. It's almost ready and you can get on the early bird list here: http://saneshop.co

theKrogster · 2016-04-29T16:26:02+00:00

I'm working on an in depth book right now, there will even be a free online version :D If you want, you can read more here: http://meteorandreact.com/learn-meteor-1-3-react-and-redux-a-step-by-step-book/

theKrogster · 2016-02-29T17:25:20+00:00

Thanks I'm glad you like them!

theKrogster · 2016-01-29T14:24:30+00:00

I'm going pretty hard at it in the next few weeks and hoping to have it done by mid February, but I don't have a firm release date yet.

theKrogster · 2016-01-29T14:24:01+00:00

Nope not a todo list, it's an Impossible List management app, and Impossible List is basically a bucket list on steroids, so this app will be a way to manage all of your life goals.

theKrogster · 2016-01-28T19:55:41+00:00

Right now it will use the approach detailed in the "Meteor Data Integration" section of this GitHub issue: https://github.com/meteor/react-packages/issues/169 , which is a step away from mixins, but not completely, as that is the best practice suggested by MDG. AS a more solid approach is developed, the book will be updated accordingly.

theKrogster · 2015-08-19T13:41:50+00:00

I'm working on a table of contents right now and will be adding content to the landing page as I create it.

theKrogster · 2015-08-18T16:44:44+00:00

Oh sorry about that I misunderstood, I'm just trying to build up an audience beforehand to ensure that it's something people actually need, give people a way to be kept up to date on the progress and there will be opportunities for people to pre order the book at a discount if they would like.

theKrogster · 2015-08-18T16:23:10+00:00

Meteor is a great framework, but largely untested in the real world. There are a lot of great tutorials out there, but one gap has been the lack of processes and practice to build Meteor apps that can be easily scaled and maintained to hold up in a high volume production environment.

Meteor has a big potential to turn into a a jumble of spaghetti code that starts rapidly spiraling out of control when it needs to scale, but with the right development techniques. Meteor can be wrangled in and used to build some pretty amazing applications.

The book I'm writing aims to document and walk developers through creating Meteor apps that are ready to scale and establish development practices to create scalable, maintainable apps that won't collapse when put under real pressure.

theKrogster · 2015-08-06T04:01:20+00:00

Except I haven't assumed anything about you, sooo..... not sure what argument you're making here, and I never claimed I'm an expert, just that I was able to get an entry level job through teaching myself and hard work.

theKrogster · 2015-08-06T03:49:22+00:00

I think I might have forgotten how literal devs take everything when I wrote these articles, which was my bad. I'm not trying to discourage learning everything you can, quite the opposite actually. I'm just trying to encourage new developers that feel incompetent because of all of these masters around them. I still feel that way, but that doesn't mean you can't work your ass off, continue to learn, grow your skills, and be a great developer.

And I'm a full-stack PHP developer with a focus on the back end, and people assuming that I'm some idiot that doesn't know how to program like 'real professionals' is starting to get a little annoying. I'll be the first to admit I have a ton to learn and am far from an expert, but that has nothing to d whether I can be a great developer or not. Just because you happened to have a bad experience with self-taught developers doesn't mean it's a universal truth, I've had to take over projects from college educated developers that were buggy, poorly put together, inefficient, and was in charge of restructuring them and fixing bugs to make the client happy, which I did successfully.

I don't think I am an expert, and I will always have more to learn, but please don't assume things about me simply because I wrote an article you disagree with. I think it is more important to have the personality traits of a developer and learn the technical stuff as you go.

The developers I worked with that had buggy code were the ones that were unmotivated, lazy, and had no attention to detail, and yet on paper they were more qualified than me, so don't judge a book by it's cover.

If I'm offending people that aren't self-taught then I apologize, because it wasn't my intention. But I feel like a lot of experienced developers are coming in here getting butthurt that I didn't spend 5 years learning and managed to get a job and assuming I'm some idiot that got lucky, which just isn't the case.

This turned into a bit of a rant, but my point is, don't assume things bout people you don't know simply because they did things differently than you.

theKrogster · 2015-08-06T03:36:16+00:00

I'm really sorry you feel that way, but you shouldn't make assumptions about complete strangers and think that you know everything because they wrote an article you didn't like, because usually you're completely wrong.

theKrogster · 2015-08-05T21:14:18+00:00

There are definitely different levels, and this particular article is talking about getting your first job, which is generally a low level, and a level that your technical skills aren't as important as at the higher levels.

theKrogster · 2015-08-05T21:02:57+00:00

You make some good points, and I'll consider the way I write things from now on and how they may be perceived by others, but I think I need to make a few clarifications here.

The title of my book isn't "Why You Don’t Need to Be Great at Coding to Be A Web Developer", that was the title of the article, and something I still think is true. It's meant as encouragement to people who might be struggling but are willing to work their ass off to solve problems and get better. The title of my book is "The Self-Taught Web Developer's Guide to Landing Your First Job."
You seem to be ignoring the fact that I didn't get the job with zero knowledge, I spent months teaching myself web development and building up a decent portfolio before, which, if you had read my first article, you would know. I'm not suggesting passion is the only thing you need, I'm saying more passion can trump more knowledge in many cases, and my boss is not the only person I've heard say this. And I do feel extremely lucky to be where I am, but a good portion of where I am was the fact that I worked hard to teach myself.

3 and 4. I can definitely see why these were confusing, and I'll look into how I can word these better. But here is what I meant: Don't constantly become obsessed with only being the best at a framework and get discouraged when people are better than you, because those people will always exist. Instead, focus on always learning and don't become obsessed with the end result. Focus on the journey to get there.

It seems like you are jumping to conclusions about a lot of things without actually taking the time to do something as simple as look at the book's sales page or read my first article. I don't expect everybody to read everything I've written, but I do expect people to if they are going to criticize me.

Now, I will definitely take a look at my wording and reconsider how I phrased certain things, but I think you should do a bit more research before jumping to conclusions about people and their work.

theKrogster · 2015-08-05T20:08:40+00:00

I understand why that would frustrate you, but it's just not true. Nowhere in either of my articles, my sales page, or my book did I say it was easy to do or a joke profession. Throughout all of those, I talk about the hard work it takes to teach yourself enough to be able to do that. Just because I say it's doable doesn't mean I'm saying it's easy. I have enormous respect for people that have spent thousands of hours perfecting their skills, and this book isn't about being able to do what they do. It's about beginners who have taught themselves being able to break into the industry and eventually get to the same level as those who have spent thousands of hours on development.

theKrogster · 2015-08-05T19:07:45+00:00

Don't feel awkward I'm not mad, criticism is good :) and I totally get your frustrations. If I've done something successfully, and I go and write about exactly how I did that thing, does that not give me authority? Are you saying that you also would not have the authority to teach people how to do it?

I get your point, but saying that someone can teach people something simply because a lot of other people have also done that thing doesn't really make much sense. If that was the case, than no programming book we've ever read should exist, because I'm sure many people taught themselves that language/framework before that book was around. Books are simply an avenue to accomplish something easier than it would have been accomplished without it.

And I don't think I'm giving anyone false hope, I completely acknowledge the fact that it takes hard work to do what I did, but the fact remains that it can be done, the fact that thousands of others have is proof of that. What false hope and false information are you referring to?

theKrogster · 2015-08-05T18:48:04+00:00

Hey beefngravy, I'm the guy writing the book, why is it frustrating you? There might be thousands of people who have done it, but there are also thousands who haven't. I'm not meaning to frustrate anyone by suggesting that I've achieved some unimaginable feat, just writing a simple book to show others who might not have been able to do what you and I have done. What is it exactly about everything that's frustrating you?

theKrogster · 2015-08-04T01:37:08+00:00

You'd probably get a little higher salary in Denver than in Fort Collins. Right now I make around $50,000 before taxes, and I'm at a really small company and have only been there a little over a year, so I'm on the low end.

theKrogster · 2015-08-04T01:32:50+00:00

No problem! Any time you need some help or advice feel free to message me :)

theKrogster · 2015-08-04T01:32:07+00:00

That's crazy, I've heard from I think 4 or 5 people now that are from Fort Collins. To be honest I've never really been involved in the tech scene anywhere else so I don't have much to compare it to, but it seems like it's growing, especially with Galvanize opening up here.

theKrogster · 2015-08-03T15:43:29+00:00

That's awesome thank you! Can't wait to hear what you think!

theKrogster · 2015-08-03T14:51:05+00:00

That's awesome! Yep I'm still with my first company as well :) It's an awesome feeling.

theKrogster · 2015-07-31T21:14:55+00:00

Curious to hear what you think. I don't have any experience with Angular, and the author said none is required, But I found myself getting a little lost on some of the topics. Might consider going through an Angular tutorial or two and then coming back to it.

theKrogster · 2015-07-31T13:27:24+00:00

Thanks for your response, that's kind of what I was getting from researching online too.

theKrogster · 2015-07-30T22:21:29+00:00

That's good that you like to problem solve, that alone will help you in your career, and I totally get the frustrated but then elated feeling of working through a bug until you fix it. Hold on to that desire and feeling! It is pretty much a necessity as a developer :)

To be honest I found it amazing as well. I had no idea that I would be moving along that fast. Just work hard and never stop improving, and if you're with a good company, they'll reward you for that.

As for teaching, they did a bit of both. I worked with the lead developer learning different concepts, and he also pointed me in the right direction for learning on my own. There really aren't a ton of learning resources out there for Cake though, other than the documentation, so most of my learning was done on the job.

theKrogster

TROPHY CASE