We get comparison questions a lot: Is it better to learn x or y? Is this language even worth learning over that language? The most recent example: Is Java and Kotlin development dead for Android development? When compared to progressive web apps (PWAs), which while more ‘generalized’, can be faster, and can cross-platform(Android & iOS) so you only have to write the app once, it’s easy to see why native tech would not be long for this world.
Our answer is, “I think native dev is going to be important for awhile…[but] there’s nothing to be lost by learning any language, as I said you can’t lose when you learn – even if you don’t end up using the technology.” “…Because what you’re going to see as you advance as a developer…is that all these frameworks, all these languages share many, many, many, many things in common and in fact when you learn your second framework, when you learn your second and third and fourth language (which will eventually happen), learning the new languages and frameworks are going to make you more knowledgeable of all the frameworks and languages you learn.” So, if you learn Java and then you go into PHP, you’re going to find the PHP is “…pretty much like Java. Yeah there’s some differences here and there but whatever; a function’s a function, a method is a method, and arrays are arrays…”.
Check out the VLOG for a more eloquent explanation of this thinking, but essentially, learn as much as you can because most languages have more in common than different, and you can’t lose from learning. -Enjoy!
WordPress is the most popular CMS in the world and they just released a new major update.
With over 30% of the world’s websites running on WordPress and something akin to 80% of small businesses, it’s safe to say that this content management system (CMS) is a pretty big deal. Which also makes it a huge opportunity for freelancers to become ‘WordPress professionals’ – someone who provides services on the site to those businesses.
WordPress recently released version 5.2, named “Jaco” in honor of renowned and revolutionary jazz bassist Jaco Pastorius, and it’s available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. For those of you not familiar with the CMS giant – TaDa! – and for those of you that just wanna check it out for yourself –Abracadabra!– but we’ll be looking at a couple key/cool updates. Full disclosure, we use WordPress…why? “Because dealing with the headaches of creating your own CMS or your own sites…”, it’s just easier with WordPress.
–PHP Error Detection: You’ll be able to fix fatal errors – like the white screen of death – without requiring ‘developer time’. Also, if your plug-ins and themes go haywire, there’s a recovery mode that you can enter into.
–Accessibility Updates: If you’re using a screen reader of other accessibility technologies, there’s a more seamless integration and more “contextual awareness and keyboard navigation flow”.
–Heads up: *If you are running an old version of PHP (less than 5.6.20), update your PHP before installing 5.2.
Of course, please check out the link above for a list of all things new and shiny, not to mention the VLOG for a more robust pass at this new version. On a side note click here for a really cool offer. We’ve teamed up with InMotion hosting and they’re essentially going to pay for you to take my course and learn how to become a web developer. Links to the offer and my courses are down below. -Enjoy!
GitHub is a good indicator of how popular programming languages are.
GitHub is an American company that provides hosting for software development version control using Git and it is a subsidiary of Microsoft. The article we got this list from is here and it’s pretty much the usual suspects…
Check out the VLOG for our take on the list and a little bit of info on the entries. -Enjoy!
JavaScript needs no introduction… even a quick google search will give you all you need to know. But at one time JS had a rival, a new kid on the block and it was called CoffeeScript (You can google it if you want but don’t bother…). “A few years back people were like ‘oohhh, CoffeeScript!’, the hipster nerds were, ‘Ooooh, CoffeeScript runs faster than JS, it’s better – you gotta use CoffeeScript!’.” And the sad thing was CoffeeScript did have some advantages and was actually slightly faster than JS but, “Rule of thumb: when you have a technology, whether it be a programming language or framework but it’s extremely dominant in the marketplace, for it to be replaced there would literally have to be some paradigm shift for that to happen. It is very very rare that you see a very established technology replaced by something that’s maybe 20% or 30% better…It has to be 5 times better! …or more.”
“Now CoffeeScript was faster blah blah blah, JS was so dominant that all JS people had to do was come in with es6, which is the latest version of JS…and CoffeeScript is now {indicates ‘thumbs down’ motion and ‘failure’ sound effect}…no more.”
This falls into something we talked about herenot too long ago, called ‘the shiny tech trap’, which is abandoning more mature/tried and true/old technology for something that’s brand-spanking new and purports to do things slightly faster and better. Unless it’s a HUGE leap forward the absolutely changes everything for the better, it’s generally not going to happen…
Take a sip of the steaming-hot cuppa VLOG to really get a sense of what we’re talking about and as a bonus, we talk about RUBY but not in a terrible way…I mean not a great way, but not terrible. Check it out. -Enjoy!
The belief that the cutting edge tech must be the tech you use in your projects.
You may have heard your dad or your grandpa say something pretty close to this while grumbling about cars, phones or television sets; and that’s ‘shiny and new isn’t always better’. “As beginners you hear about this new technology is so great, that new technology is so great, etc, etc, and you can get overwhelmed and caught up with all this. …It’s chasing the illusion of perfection.”
And no demographic is more vulnerable to this illusion than young developers. For ease (and fun) let’s refer to this demographic as “noob” developers. “…[Noob] developers will chase perfection in their application development looking for ‘the better language’, or ‘the better framework’.” No only is this a waste of precious time but also a brisk jaunt into the realm of madness. “Don’t get me wrong, there are frameworks that are more ‘mature’ [or] ‘better’ than other frameworks given the application that you want to build. [For example]…If you’re building an AI based system, you’re not gonna wanna do that with PHP…you could…people have done machine learning with PHP – I wouldn’t do it – no, no you do PYTHON because that’s where all the action is, that’s where the market share is: that’s where it’s ‘mature’. …[But] you’ll find that any of the prominent frameworks and languages out there today…they’re going to produce good work…whether the app is good or not is up to you.”
Break your foot off on this VLOG for a very in-depth (and tangent-filled) dive into the “new tech trap” and remember, “in general all these frameworks and languages have pros and cons and everything looks greener on the other side of the fence until you get there.” -Enjoy.
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!
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
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!
