I’ve been trying to learn web development and coding on Udemy.com. Was recently laid off by my father’s construction company because of all the bullshit going on so I’m looking to intensify my learning so I can get a new job in this new field. Suggestions? Help? Anything please?
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le ebin troll
Right!
I really enjoy it. You get to be creative and solve puzzles and there's no one way to write code. But I need a career and I want one in that field
What kind of coding are you learning? Honestly, the best thing might be to get a free website and just start playing around with Javascript or whatever you're using. If not web based, pick up an compiler, start with some good old Hello World. SQL's very useful but you need pre-existing databases to work with....
https://www.w3schools.com
is a fantastic resource for a lot of coding skills, though you'll need to make your own sandbox to play around with bigger things.
Right now I'm taking general web dev boot camp class on udemy. It’s pretty broad and I’m wondering if it would be better for me to have a more focused learning style or course to better my chances of getting a job
I'm not in HR but I'd say the best thing to bring to it would be some completed projects; just think 'what would be useful' or even just fun and build some things, get used to knowing what kind of workflow there is, what things can be done, which languages work best for what. Certifications help but if the people hiring are tech literate than a portfolio of programs you've made, describing how you made them, might do.
I'm just a hobbyist programmer, I have no computing degree. I became known for it at every job I've ever had because I can usually find ways to improve workflow with a program or two.
The biggest problem I've had with IT groups has been that there's usually a useless middle management shoved between whose job is to tell the programmers what the end users want, and the middle management group are neither end users, nor programmers. So they tell end users their requests are impossible, and they don't really know how end users use the programs to communicate clearly to the programmers. As an example, in one place I worked, we used a web-based program for entering case details. We requested a feature so that hitting backspace if not in a text box wouldn't trigger the 'back' option bringing us back to the main page and losing our data. Middle management insisted that was, like, super complicated and high dollar stuff, way beyond what we could get done. I had a working sample within two hours--without knowing a god damned single line of Javascript at the time, just clicking 'view source' and seeing what libraries the page already relied on and pulling a relevant script from StackExchange. I know disabling functions based on the active element is not too complex. I got written up for attitude instead of commended. I don't work there anymore.
Where I work now, we end users can send direct requests to programmers, and most of us get pulled off of our regular tasks at random intervals to test new features just to make sure it's intuitive to real every day end users and get real feedback before pushing live changes. I was not hired for IT but I've written a few little programs to make our jobs easier and it's just been a matter of security looking them over and giving the green light. I'm now known more for programming than my actual job.
So if you can get in as a content editor or customer service (that's not a dead end call center job where you have 0 time to do anything but take calls and follow a script) or accounting or something, that might be a good way to ease into an IT department without a formal degree. Unfortunately a lot of tech jobs might require x hours CIS or a college degree to get looked at, even though programming absolutely is something you can learn independently.
This is highly subjective but here's my view of some languages purely as a hobbyist based on what I've picked up and why...
Javascript - If you wanna do anything web based, learn this. This will do your heavy lifting for most web based systems.
HTML/CSS - Really beefs up what you can do with Javascript. CSS isn't a language but it'll help you get a feel for classes and elements which you can manipulate with Javascript.
SQL - If you want to do anything at all with databases, you will need this. If not, this is absolutely useless to you. So if your users need to interact with a lot of each other's data, rather than input, process with some set data you put in, output, yes. If it's more "user inputs x, program processes, outputs Y" then you're fine.
PHP - If you wanna do anything with SQL in a webbased/Javascript app, add this on. It's not too tough, if you've already got HTML.
3WSchools is great for all of the above.
VB - Good for interacting with Windows products, particularly Microsoft products, easy to learn, but not very well respected because Windows products tend to already be made to be very naturally user friendly.
VBA - You can do fucking magic in Excel with this. Otherwise useless.
Everything I know about those I learned by just looking up code until it came together.
C++ - An absolute beast of a power language. This can do just about anything you want to do and will be the means to get it done as efficiently as possible in terms of processor power. But it's also one of the hardest ones to learn and it's often the equivalent of starting to make an apple pie by planting an apple tree.
ChiliTomatoNoodle on Youtube has a really great tutorial on games. I can also probably dig out my old beginniner's PDF book I used for self study; it's entirely based on using the Console I/O. Otherwise, yup, Google and find Stack Exchange help for whatever you want until you can make sense of it.
Python - Good for "just for fun" projects and things that look neat, very fast and intuitive. Good starter language, but I've never found myself using it since picking up other languages.
I haven't used it in so long I don't even remember where I picked it up from.
I’ve been on the findsomethingnew.org site for the last hour
Unfortunately, interview process has gone to shit in the field. Its not like when I started when it was measured by what you can actually do to bring value. Now its heavily weighted to computer science grads, so my suggestion, learn how to do the code puzzle BS sorting algorithms, working with data structures. At least split your learning 50/50. Sites like Hackerrank are a good place to start. I guarantee you will come up against this lazy style of hiring 60% of the actual responses to resume. You can know how to do actual stuff really well, only to be weeded out by some BS puzzle that does not represent anything you will ever actually do. Its still the way it is now days though.
Can confirm. Some companies have an entire day long interview (on top of the phone screens and tech screens)
If you have some money saved up, I know companies recruit from boot camps. But you gotta be one of the better students to be noticed.
When learning to code, the most important thing is an objective. Set up your own website, and make a web page with some JavaScript to display a graph of some kind.
You're "learning to code" ? :)
This one's on sale: https://www.udemy.com/course/responsive-web-development/
Interesting. Do you like codeacademy? I'm going to check this one out
Anything with webdev should focus on these:
HTML
CSS
Javascript
Then once you get the basics of them you need to chose a framework/lib to use.. right now the industry has moved away from roll-your-own and is prepared frameworks that use the latest tech to drive the browser faster with min HTML creation..
Years ago it was just a flat HTML page and CSS to style it, then we added JavaScript in Netscape 2.1, which added dynamic components that can change on a page after it was loaded.
during the same time the real work, the processing was done on the back-end, this was mostly in Perl and C.. (before the www took off, All of AOL was written in C++ from what I remember)
so the client (browser) can stay lite, and the back -end server can run a program that can prepare the HTML adn send it to the client. This meant you coded in a diff language for the back-end server.. this resulted in two diff roles and folks, some worked "Front-end" while others ran the back-end..
Fast foward to 2008ish and jQuery hit the scene, which standardized an API for all browsers, making it simple to write some cool dynamic pages. Along with AJAX which allowed a web page to reach back to the server without. having to reload the whole document was a break-through and the Single Page Application was born. the whole website was one page and JavaScript driving all the changes..
This lead to a lot of code in both the client and the server..
Then node.js hit the scene and all the gloves came off as we can spin up a server in seconds and distribute the code across virtual machines.. it was a match made in heaven. then NPM node package manager was born, and a whole service at your fingertips for free node.js packages that let your application do anything you wish.. just have to find it download and install and you're ready to go.. this was for about 7 years coding all the packages together in a node app... fantastic stuff but everyone did it their own way..
Enter FB and Google who realized with the latest HTML5, node.js and the Virtual DOM, they could create a JS framework taht can play the role of both server and client at the same time while wrapping node.js principles in a new framework that included all you needed.... "isomorphic programming", which is a fancy way of saying using one language for both client and server..
So FB created REACT and GOOGLE ANGULAR..
Angular took off first and was adopted but then REACT showed they can do it faster and better with "Functional Programming" that does not mean using functions but instead mathematical versions of functions that are tiny, they always return the same result given the same input, this makes building and testing applications faster and safer as no side-effects caused by immutability which is under strict control.. this means once you create a variable you never change it.. instead you create a new one.. this lets you see the whole history of the application and the data space over time..
REACT is the new hotness everyone is chasing.. it has had it's growth problems and changed their architecture a few times causing folks to have to refactor their code.. while Angular did the same as well, but now has caught up to REACT in performance.. REACT is actually not a framework (complete system) but a libaray, which means you need to use npm to install other pacakges to work with REACT for db connections and other things Angular comes with out of the box..
So REACT has a large stack of packages you can do it many diff ways, while Angular is very opinoned about how to do things and come with everything already in the box..
I told you all this so you realize the path ahead is really about learning the basics quickly, then choosing either REACT or Angular and learning them, as they are what are used in the industry to get work.. another easier platform is Vue.js, which was created by an ex Google Employee that liked Angular but wanted something more light weight.. it is growing fast and may be a better on ramp into the world of frameworks..
But REACT and Angular have to be in yoru future to survive int he industry today...
If you don't learn REACT or Angluar you will be mostly with node.js and npm which are also fantastic, but you need to roll your own..
Another alternative is to skip webdev and go to making games.. Blender3d is free and Unity is also free. Udemy also has courses for them both.. if you are very creative you can launch an indie game on Steam platform for free and learn webdev for you day job..
There are many paths to take, I would suggest learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript at a min because those skill transfer well to everything today on the internet..
GOOD LUCK and ask any questions about code or industry..