Ever wondered how different apps or OS communicate with each other? For example, maybe your working on a JAVA app but it has to communicate with another app in California and they’re not the same app? Or you have an AI developed in PYTHON and it outputs a certain amount of data, how does it get that to a PHP web app (for arguments sake, I don’t make up your own scenario…)? How are the two going to communicate to sync or rectify data?
Well way back in the day there was RMI (Remote Method Invocation) and that was possible in JAVA world only. After that they used XML (eXtensible Markup Language), “XML code was so verbose, meaning there was so much XML code, …often times there was more XML code than data you were exchanging from system A to system B…”
These days the most commonly used method is something called JSON (JAVAscript Object Notation). “JSON is just basically a little bit of JAVAscript code wrapped around the information event you want to send from computer system/software A to software B. It’s pretty much the universal standard these days.” “It’s much more lightweight than the XML solutions…typically if something is easier and faster, it wins.”
If you enjoyed this soupcon into inter-operability, then check out the VLOG for a meaty main course and a little ‘digestif’ of advice on what to learn to be able to handle JSON effortlessly should the need arise. Keep on doing your good work and ponder the thought of two computers in a room trying to talk to each other in a human language…what would they even say? -Enjoy
Alright, so you’re learning to code and you feel like you’ve got a relatively good grasp of the fundamentals, you’ve done a few tutorials and they confirm that from a theoretical standpoint: you got this!
Well, that’s good news…so what’s next? Maybe some more challenging tutorials to really put your knowledge to the test? Perhaps we send out some resumes to companies telling them we’d be on board for some intern/unpaid work to “try things out”? …Oh no, my sweet little birdie…it’s time to spread your wings and fly! “When people are learning anything new (and coding is not unique in this regard), …there’s often a lot of fear or trepidation: the unknown, the new, is kind of…it’s anxiety-provoking for people, especially career-oriented choices.”
Just Jump In, Man… Now full disclosure here, when we’re advocating “jumping in”, we’re assuming 1-That you’ve done our courses (shameless plug), which are designed to take advantage of over almost 3 decades in the business and to prepare you quickly and efficiently to handle almost any problem right out of the gate, or 2- That you’re trained to the gills and really just don’t know what you’re next step is. “A good course will give you the confidence to feel that you can move forward and actually do something for real. [When] you can build responsive a website, you’re ready to go. Do you know everything? No. But you’re ready to go.” “You learn so much more by building real-world projects for real people as opposed to walking through tutorials. Because what you’re going to learn: a big part of being a developer is interacting/speaking/communicating with the client; figuring out problems along the way.”
The VLOG goes into more detail and closes with a really nice bit of advice, which we recommend checking out, but it wouldn’t be a great VLOG if we didn’t have a mind-bending, super mario galaxy-inspired shot at the end, which we also recommend checking out. -Enjoy!
Selling online is really the future of selling; no question. So, is getting into a niche eCommerce business the way to go?
Niches historically have their highs and lows, depending on subject matter. A niche band that your buddy introduced you to might be music to your ears, but perhaps that band isn’t making a lot of money at shows because only a hand full of people who really appreciate what they do turn out…
On the other hand, finding a niche in eCommerce that you can fill would be a good thing. “Niche is the key to success, because if it’s not niche then you’re going to be competing with a lot of big players (possibly), meaning bigger companies or you’re just gonna have a lot of competition.” This is gonna be a shameless plug, but we go into this in better detail in our ‘Complete Entrepreneur’ course that we offer (link below).
“…If you want to get into business go into niche or you go into an industry where there’s just a huge amount of demand that the demand outstrips the supply.” One of the reasons we recommend finding a niche on the web to fill, whether it be eCommerce, WordPress, etc. is that you don’t necessarily have to go to school to be able to jump in. We’re talk about 3-5 years of schooling here… for example, you don’t have to get a data science degree, or a software engineering degree. You can simply take a course…like the ones we offer…nudge, nudge, wink, wink… and be able to jump right in, get your experience, grow your reputation and make your living.
VLOG your face off and check out more in-depth reasons to find a niche market to go into and stick around til the end (or just jump to the end), to see Montreal in the winter…just in case you’ve had enough of this wonderful July heat and forgot about what comes next… -Enjoy!
Does it make sense to use open source software … or should you write all your software from scratch?
Ask any grizzled old veteran of any industry if it’s best to build from scratch and they’ll more often than not say ‘Hhhhaaaaiiiiyyyyyllll no!’ “The last thing you want to do is reinvent the wheel.”, but hopefully they’ll have a funky beard and a Texan accent…no wait, I’m thinking of a prospector, yup. Sorry.
But the same answer can be applied (sans accent, I guess) to the question, is it better to build from scratch or use open source software? “The last thing you want to do is write code that someone has already written. …Remember when you’re using a high level language like JAVAscript or PYTHON or PHP…you’re using somebody else’s code; …you’re actually using code based on other code. This notion that it’s best to rewrite from scratch, it’s something that young developers have…”
Is there a time when you don’t want to use open source code? Absolutely, and I’ll let the VLOG do the explaining for that. Plus, there’s some sweet top-down car riding all over Montreal with a 360 camera. Check it out, and when in doubt, remember the three rules of software development: 1. Reuse 2. reUSE 3.REUSE -Enjoy!
What kind of highly complex and crazy work will you be doing? The answer may surprise you…
So what is the most common web developer job that is going to be out there in 2019? Are you gonna be building the next FACEBOOK from NODEjs or the next WordPress.com with PHP? The short answer is…maybe, but probably not…
“The most likely situation is you’re going to be working with small to medium sized businesses. Web developers will be building wordpress-based sites with custom mini apps, perhaps. You might be modifying shopify sites and deploying those for people.” Not as glamorous as you thought, is it? Well, it’s the truth…
Think of your standard web developer “…like a GP in the medical [professional]. You got medical doctors that are general practitioners, they don’t specialize in brain surgery, which would be kind of the equivalent of a NODEjs master or a PHP-Laravel master. The most common doctor out there is the GP (general practitioner): someone who takes care of most people’s medical needs. That is what a web professional is, you might do a Paypal integration, another day you might do a WordPress theme customizer…this is where a lot of the professional web-based jobs are gonna be.”
Don’t get us wrong, there’ going to be plenty of work building highly complex apps from scratch, “… but at the end of the day for every advanced app that’s built with NODEjs, there’s going to be five hundred, maybe thousands of jobs where you’re going to modify and build up a WordPress-based site, or work on a Shopify site for somebody.”
The VLOG really does this subject justice, including an answer to the common question of money. Specifically why does the NODEjs master make as much as the common web developer who’s just modifying Shopify or WordPress, etc. and it’s a good answer. -Enjoy!
So you’re a wordpress ‘dabbler’, maybe you use HTML or CSS to install plugins or themes? Maybe you do a little work for people and make a little bit of cash? …Maybe you realize you can make a lot more money if you knew more.
If this sounds like you then you’ve probably come across two options: learn PHP or learn JAVAscript/Node? And as a freelancer, you’ve probably got some other things on the go, time is money and you don’t have the time to learn them both. Well we gotcha…
“If you want to become a complete WordPress developer, which means a lot more contracts …then of course you gotta learn PHP because WordPress is built with PHP…you’re going to have to learn some JAVAscript if you’re going to be working with WordPress, but it’s not nearly as important.” Don’t get us wrong JAVAscript and Node are useful and have their applications, but learn PHP. Another reason being that “PHP is going to open up a huge number of opportunities in that regard.” So, sweet bonus…
Check out the VLOG for some more detailed responses to this question and if you’re really interested, we offer a kick-ass course where you can become a complete web developer fast. You would be given the tools to learn and to use most programming languages (PHP included) with speed and efficacy <link at the bottom>. -Enjoy
Wanna come up with the next great business idea? Better know the industry and know it well.
Haven’t we all at one point been in the shower or brushing our teeth and BOOM! We think we’ve come up with this amazing business idea. We’re sure it’s so good it’ll make millions and we can buy our own island and start working on our delightfully eccentric hairdo…
Fact of the matter is “the key to finding a really good idea as an entrepreneur, is to get yourself into a particular market or particular domain and really understand it”.
Yes, you’ll hear stories about that one person who had this great idea out of nowhere and now they have an island (and a super weird hairdo!), but that’s the exception rather than the norm. Too many times people jump into an industry they have little to no experience with, spend a whole bunch of money on product and just have it sit there because they missed a small but crucial fact about that industry. To really know the industry your in, is to spot where the weaknesses are that you can fill with your great idea or, if we were to work backwards; you could have what you think is a great idea and start researching the industry that idea could help. Learn all you can about it ie: talk to people in that industry; business owners, etc. Maybe even take a job or a few gigs in that domain to really get a sense of it and how it works. Yes, it’ll take awhile but if you’re serious about getting island(and crazy hairdo) money, it’s worth the time.
And lastly (not a real word.), Don’t get ‘married’ to your idea, be prepared to change it to match what the industry needs. ANY entrepreneur worth their salt will tell you that flexibility is the key to success, so be prepared to change elements of your idea for maximum efficacy.
Check out the VLOG for not just more details into getting a great business idea, but also for “the bird food incident” story…you’re welcome. And if you’re curious about becoming an entrepreneur, links are at the bottom to a course that we offer which no doubt is built on research and knowing the market your in …and some real world experiences(like ‘the bird food incident’) too. Keep on having great ideas and who knows, maybe an eccentric hairdo is in your cards? Well, for those of us that still have hair, at any rate… -Enjoy!
So PHP has jumped from version 5.6 to 7…which means they skipped (version) 6. Interesting? Maybe, but wanna know what’s really cool? It’s almost 50% faster and now PHP has jumped up to version 7.3. Why should you even care? Well for starters STUDIO WEB, our kick-ass course that helps you learn to code fast and efficiently, yet is somehow packed with learning and exercises solving problems you will encounter in the real world (Whoa! that was a lot of shameless promo, apologies!), that runs on PHP and when we moved up from 7 to 7.3 we saw a 15% increase in speed and big reduction in memory requirements (aka footprint). Which means you can learn at an even faster rate while having your load times cut practically in half (okay, that’s the promo stop line, right here. Sorry.).
It should come as no surprise really, “the PHP community are working hard to optimize and to bring PHP to a higher level.” Possibly because for a few years PHP was getting really bad press, due to most people thinking PHP was still using version 3 (not their best version). However, “PHP is a very very capable language. Facebook was created with PHP as an example…Most dynamic sites are driven by PHP, they’re putting a lot of effort into optimizing the core language…so you see this huge speed increase at run time…PHP takes much less RAM and memory…it’s much quicker”.
So there it is. The VLOG is pretty much just us loving PHP and talking it up but you get to see my dapper mug…and blink and you’ll miss it…maybe the most subtle and pacified dig at RUBY yet? -Enjoy!
With more and more people accruing astronomical student loan debt, many wonder is education really better than real world experience.
Full transparency:. 1. This is mostly an American/North America problem. 2. Not all higher learning institutions are created equal. 3. We are talking mostly about software engineers. 4. There will be shameless plugs to our online courses.
If you’ve been a young adult on this planet in the last 120 years, you’ve heard the sales pitch: Go to school, get a degree/diploma, get a really good job, make money, get married, buy a house, settle down and pump out 2.5 kids and get a dog…maybe a cat. And we’ve all accepted and railed against this pitch to varying degrees. But more and more (and this is especially prevalent in the US and Canada), graduates are leaving colleges and universities with astronomical student debts and <almost> worthless degrees. Which in turn begs the question; ‘What did I do with the last 3-5 years of my life if I can’t get a job in my field of study?’
Now I feel I need to say that this is not always the case for everyone. And there are fields like medicine where higher learning and degrees are expected and can be worthwhile, but let’s talk about software engineers…and maybe people with philosophy degrees…sorry, artistic types.
I’ll get to the point quickly because if you’ve just graduated a 3 year program at $30K/year you either don’t have time to read all of this at your 9-5 entry level job you had to take to pay back your almost $100K student debt or you really should stop reading this and go back to looking for a job to pay it off… But that’s the problem isn’t it? You have this crazy debt and no guarantee of a job in your field, while someone who hasn’t gone to college or university, and has taken a well put together online course…like STUDIO WEB ( sorry, that was shameless), has completed the course in way less time than you, has had time to garner real world experience and is now just as qualified, if not more so, to work in your field.
This has a lot of people wondering is a higher learning degree worth it? Look, I know it’s hard for colleges and universities, they have a lot of staff to pay; academic and administrative. They have curriculum that take long to approve, which almost always guarantees that the knowledge being passed down to you is dated or even irrelevant. While courses being offered online for less than half the price of admission, or even just going in with no education but ability to jump in and get your hands dirty has gotten others to better positions in the field in (sometimes) way less time.
Check out the VLOG for an almost surgical analysis of this subject. Heads up, it’s a meaty one. But there are article quotes read and then in depth experiences that are shared. We’re not saying to not get your education or to drop out if your already…institutionalized? All we’re saying is to weigh your options, look at the market (in your field), and think of what is really important in that field; most times while education is an important foundation, real world experience wins out almost every time. And if you can take our awesome STUDIO WEB courses, and our freelance courses (<links at the bottom>/ Shameless promo #2, sorrynotsorry…) and get that foundation in months, that would leave you way more time to accrue that oh-so-sought after real world experience…
No matter how knowledgeable you may be, humility is still the most appreciated skill to have…
Another startling discovery from DUH (the Department of Urban Humanity); no matter how much knowledge you may posses, nobody likes a ‘know-it-all’.
“…a sure sign of youth, or a classic trait of the young is arrogance; figuring that you know it all or that you’ve figured it all out.”
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t some arrogant old-timers out there but (and this is assuming that with age comes wisdom, of course), “…one of the things you learn as you become older is to become more humble: to realize that you do not have all the answers…”
And we do not want to make this one of those ‘back my day’ rants at all. We realize that this generation is one of the most well-informed and knowledgeable generations there is. Think of this as more of a life hack (and yes, it is very ironic): The more humble you are in any given situation, the more empathetic you become and the more people are going to want to listen to you. “you want to be skeptical of everything and…you want to realize that you don’t know everything…”
Check out our VLOG for an in-car-chat about our experiences as we got older (yes, we were arrogant ‘know-it-alls’ once upon a time too). And know that the ability to admit that you’re wrong or that you don’t have all the answers is not a weakness, it’s a strength…but then again, what do we know?
