Is Java easy to learn or am I just not good at programming?
First of all, I think we can all agree: Awwww, muffin, no! Second, “99% of the time, when you’re running into problems…learning a programming language -especially Java- it’s normal for everybody and 99% of the time you just have to give yourself some time and a chance.”
Let’s look at some potential hurdles: 1- The beginning is always the hardest: I think this applies to almost everything in the human experience, but even more so with all things programming/coding. “…What you have to essentially do is literally train your brain to think and process information in a totally different way.” Of course there’s going to be mistakes, and you may not understand everything, but press on and it will eventually ‘click’; and things will fall into place. 2- Pace yourself: You will learn infinitely more by committing yourself to 20 minutes a day vs. a 5 hour burnout-a-thon. “You should write at least 20 minutes of code a day, even if you don’t understand the code -make errors, break it, fuss around with it, etc- you gotta get through that initial hurdle where you don’t understand …Once you do, the whole world opens up to you and it becomes much easier.” 3- Things take time/Rest period: To assimilate the knowledge you’ve gathered, you need rest. Your brain needs time to ‘frame’ that knowledge (for lack of a better term). We need only turn to that modern day renaissance man, Arnold Schwarzenegger for advice… “I saw a video recently asking him about training, …and he said… the thing you shouldn’t do is over-train. Same thing with learning code.” Bottom line: rest is as important as learning. 4- <Optional/Caution> Consider your teacher: This is a bit murky and we advise serious caution here, but, “a lot of these coding boot camps are taught by people who don’t know how to teach. It’s just the facts: teaching is a skill, it’s a talent -people go to school for years to learn how to teach…”. If you’re seriously feeling like the material is out of your ‘grasp’, that might be the answer. Please exercise caution, though… 5- Consider the material/Baby steps: We’ve heard the old adage, ‘walk before you run’. Walking is an easier thing to learn, which then lends itself really well (synergistically) to learning to run. By the same token, “…Java is not the first [choice to learn], in my opinion, as a programming language. Why? Because Java; though it’s a powerful language, that power comes with complexity -there’s a lot of things you have to account for when you’re writing Java code that you don’t have to account for if you’re writing Python or JavaScript, PHP or even RUBY [there you go, RUBY!]”. There are other easier languages to learn that later lend themselves well (again, synergy) to learning Java. Baby steps…
So there you have it. The VLOG goes into way more detail, including listing some of the easier, more synergistic languages to learn instead of the ‘Java jump’. Also, and I hate to do this but <Shameless Self Promotion>, we offer courses that take advantage of both coding experience AND teaching experience every step of the way. Check it out (links at the bottom).
The thing to remember is you’re not stupid, sometimes you just need to take it easy on yourself, give yourself a break, and be patient. Enjoy more sweet scenery of MTL at the end of this VLOG… Ye gods! Just look at all that green in the background. -Enjoy!
There is no better teacher of software development than the long term experience of building and refining a commercial app used by countless users.
As we get older we have friends who get married and have children. Sometimes while hanging out, maybe while having drinks or dinner, you might ask them how parenthood is going or (heavens forbid), you let it slip that you can’t wait to have children yourself, that it would be ‘fun’… Then you get to watch their brows furrow and the mood get very somber (did the lights suddenly dim in here? Did it get colder?!), and with a gaze that seems to penetrate your very soul they say in a foreboding voice, ‘YOU.HAVE.NO.IDEA.’. That somehow the scope and challenge of raising children is completely out your experience and in the abstract and ethereal, and one can never hope to grasp it until they are waist deep in it… Wow, that got ranty real fast…
Well, we’re going to make a statement that might put us in the same category as those pretentious parents but unlike those parents, we do it with love and encouragement…but we will dim the lights for dramatic effect… “You don’t really know app development until you’ve developed an app, taken it to market, gotten feedback, refactored/refined, and then made money with that app, or at least been part of a team that’s gone through that process where you’ve seen the app go from inception to actual functional use with the end user.” I know, for some of you ‘thems fightin’ words‘, but what we mean is that version 1 of your app, is not going to be the end – far from it in fact. A lot of (young) developers [devs] coming up are under the assumption that if they write the ‘perfect’ code, that the app will be perfect and there will be no need for a version 2, 3 or even 4. “…You have to expect that when you become a professional developer, that you’re going to go through many iterations…”. There is a purely academic idea that has been making the rounds lately in articles and even some YouTube videos about the “purity of code” or “purity of implementation”, and when you’re making commercial software, it’s just not the case.
The VLOG goes into waaaaayyyyy more robust detail, stemming from over 3 decades of experience in the business (which is like 269 years in young dev time), but what we really want you to know is, with regards to your app: (A) – Don’t worry about making mistakes (B) – Don’t expect that your first iteration of your code and your software is going to be perfect –it will never be perfect. so “…get your app out quickly (within reason, of course), don’t waste your time with perfect implementation.” Also, bonus material: We make fun of RUBY a lot. But at the end of the Vlog is a sort of postmortem theorizing -from a reliable source- why RUBY lost out on a huge share of the market. Plus, some sweet aerial scenery of MTL. -Enjoy!
How many hours a day should you spend learning code?
‘Eager beavers’ everywhere! Whether it be the gym, sweet/salty snacks, continuing education, or becoming the best damn Fortnite player in history, most of us tend to go ‘hard and fast’: that is to say we try to absorb as much as we can in as little time as we can. The result: We end up ‘burning out’ real bad and probably never want to return to the thing that hurt us so bad…at least for awhile. We’ve all been there, we want to do, learn, or be something so bad that we end of ‘OD’ing’ (over-dosing) on it. And this is especially true with learning; remember the all night ‘cram’ sessions before big exams when you were younger? Add to that the fact that you’re learning a new skill like coding, which sometimes is not as intuitive as you’re used to things being, and you could ‘burn out’ before your first session is done!
So how many hours a day should you spend learning to code? “If you’re first starting out, you should maybe limit it to 30-45 minutes a day. Whenever you start getting into code for the first time, you’re literally going to be re-wiring your brain physically …you’re going to be learning to think and process information in a totally different way.”
What’s really cool about this is learning in different ways is that it makes your brain ‘stronger’. Much like physically training with different exercises, disciplines, and sports makes your body stronger and more adaptable to different stresses and pressures, learning/thinking and reasoning in different ways re-wires the brain to be ‘fit’ (for lack of a better word) and more adaptable to different situations. And I don’t know about you guys, but as I get older and more set in my ways, the need for an agile mind is more and more necessary.
Always leave’em wanting more It’s an old vaudevillian/performer’s adage. It means don’t go overboard when entertaining/performing. Always leave your audience wanting more so they will return, buy more tickets and (more importantly), they’ll want to be there. Very apt and very applicable to learning, “you should leave your daily learning session (encoding) wanting more, not exhausted. You wanna leave it and go, ‘this is cool’ …you want to create an association that’s positive, that’s fun with coding…”.
The VLOG really goes into more detail about this, while adding a psychological angle to it …and what would a good VLOG be without a RUBY slam (there’s more than one!), BOOM! Also, check out our courses for coding, freelancing or entrepreneurship <links below>. They have been built from the ground up with this very principle in mind! Remember when you’re starting out be kind to yourself, take it slow and easy, and have fun so you’ll want to come back. Whether it’s learning a new skill or anything else in life, it’s just a good ‘code’ to have… -Enjoy!
You just landed your first job as a programmer or a dev… Congratulations! Now how do you keep that job? We gotcha. First, read this. That’s a lot to remember, are you freaking out? No problem. All you really need to do is remember step 1 or (for those of you that didn’t read it):
Communication. “Communicate; listen, that’s a big part of it. …Being somebody they can count on, somebody that gets along, somebody that they can speak to is a huge part of the job. …Just work with people, listen, and that is like 90% of it.” -also- Don’t ask Google-able questions. “…If you find that you’re having difficulty, don’t be afraid to ask questions …short, concise questions -don’t ask super long-winded questions- keep it pithy/to the point… …[And] don’t ask too many questions -especially questions that you could research on Google (ultimately they’re hiring you to get the job done).” But stuff happens, for example, “…there could be some design issues, there could be some specifics with regards to their particular software…hopefully they’ll be able to provide that [answers] for you…” -and- The ‘Ramp-up’. It doesn’t matter if you’re a fresh-faced noob or a grizzled old veteran programmer, no one with brain in their skull expects you to get things right outta the gate. There’s a ‘ramp-up’: “When they first bring you in there’s going to be some expectation of a ‘ramp-up’ time. You’re not going to know everything …if they have an advanced piece of software, …you’re going to have to get to know the code base, and that could take time depending on the complexity of the software. It’s not your code, you’re going to have to learn it. And in your first little while go out of your way to make sure you try as quickly as possible to learn the code -don’t kill yourself; don’t get all sweaty and nervous about it- …but ask your coworker, your lead. ‘what do I need to do first so I can get up to speed and help you guys?’ “.
After that, it’s like any other job, “…be sure to double-check your work: make sure you don’t make any silly mistakes, …if you’re assigned to a task, make sure you get things done on time, …and hopefully you didn’t lie on your resume and say you were a ‘master nerd’, cuz they’re going to figure you out pretty quickly…”.
Check out the VLOG for some really good advice and <Shameless Promo> generally speaking, if you’ve taken the web stack course, you might find yourself ahead of the game as many people found out once they got the job… -Enjoy!
The state of the ‘developer ecosystem’ in 2019 by software development company of note: JetBrains.
In the beginning of 2019, JetBrains -a software company whose tools are geared towards software developers and project managers- polled almost 7,000 developers to identify the State of the ‘developer ecosystem’. The resulting article can be found here, in all its glory, but we thought we’d break it down for ya and give you some of our thoughts…
-Java is the most popular language. “Most developers will use multiple languages, so …it’s kinda silly to get caught up in what’s the most [popular].
-JavaScript is the most used overall language. “That makes sense because JavaScript’s in the web browser, if you’re doing React, Angular, if you’re doing a basic website, you’re going to be using JavaScript.”
-‘Go’ is the most promising programming language. “I would put ‘Go’ on a ‘perhaps to learn’ list. …The top languages to learn are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python…”.
-TL;DR.“One thing that you see across all the surveys, that JavaScript, Java, Python, HTML, CSS … SQL, these are all coding languages and in some cases programming languages that are always at the top or near the top of the stack. And another takeaway that were on all the surveys is that the web stack is still by far dominant.”
The VLOG goes into more detail, with more educated extrapolations and a sweet scenic boat or canoe ride. -Enjoy!
How do you get through really boring and/or tedious tasks?
If you’ve been a human on this planet for more than 8 minutes, chances are you’ve come across a tedious task – something that you just didn’t want to do (maybe it’s boring, not your interest, or even expertise) and for some reason, you are being forced to do it. After rolling your eyes, and groaning the groan of a tortured soul, you stare at the task and ask yourself, ‘How the #%$@ am I going to get through this?’
The first and easiest answer is ‘farm it out’, that is hiring/paying someone else to do it. …And after that’s done, you’ll have plenty of time to go yachting off the coast of France, daddy Warbucks! But for those of us that don’t have the money to do that, the answer is a little more pragmatic, but only slightly less painful…
“I just go in there and I say, ‘okay, I’m just gonna do 20 minutes’, …I’m just gonna move the ball 2 or 3 feet forward. And you just discipline yourself to do little chunks of work of the stuff you hate, because if you try to do something you hate doing or you don’t wanna do, and you wait to do it on the last day, and you got hours of this crappy work to do, it’s gonna be painful.” Breaking boring, tedious, or just plain crappy chunks of work up into smaller sections will save you time in the long run and your sanity.
Check out the VLOG, it’s short and sweet. Check out our courses, if you haven’t already and just like eating your aunt’s salted cod and boiled peas dish, take it one bite at a time… -Enjoy!
A response to a recent video I made about people who are constantly doing tutorials instead of getting jobs.
If you’d like to see the first installment, click here, but in the spirit of ‘doing‘ we’re moving on! Sometimes we over prepare, guys, it happens. You’re so focused on making a big splash right outta the gate. You don’t want to be blindsided by anything and look like you don’t know what you’re talking about or look like a noob, so you prepare -you take tutorials and then you start thinking to yourself, ‘what if this happens? what if that happens?’ and you start doing more tutorials to be prepared for those things and before you know it, the fear of failure has you stuck. Instead of coming out of the gate; swinging, the gate flings open and you stand there paralyzed, not daring to move.
“It’s just fear: you don’t want to get into it… Just jump into it! Trust me, you’ll learn so much more by just jumping into a gig. Once you have your foundations down, do one or two tutorials and then do a gig and figure out how to get it done as you go. That’s how I did it, that’s how all developers started out.”
The VLOG goes into better detail, including the first full-stack gig that Stef took with no prior knowledge of it. Check out our courses (links below), if you’re interested – they are amazing – and remember, <I’m plagiarizing> A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. Or think of the immortal words of Shia LaBoeuf and, “just DO it!!!!!” -Enjoy!
Should you get a college degree or learn online to quickly get into freelance web design and development?
If you feel like you’ve already read about this in a previous article or saw it in a previous VLOG, yes and no. That previous work was about education in North America, “where student loan debt is an issue, where college is not free…”, and this one is about education in places like Europe, which are a little different because, “in Europe college is free…well it’s paid [for] by the taxes, so in essence you’re paying for it whether or not you go, because it’s built into the taxes.” In all honesty, we brought this up because we were contacted by someone in Europe who’s thinking of going to school to get their degree but was wondering about completing online courses and going into freelancing instead.
Now, we made a lot of assumptions on this person’s part: we assumed they were pretty young because they mentioned that their parents wanted them to go to college, which made us further assume they were probably living at home too, so while the advice we’re about to give may seem oddly specific, we still feel most of it can apply if you’re living in Europe or a place that has a similar educational setup. “If you live in a part of the world where the education is free, you’re living at home so you don’t need to make money immediately, and you’re going to pay for it in taxes anyway, right? The government pays, so it means you pay in some form …it’s only a year and a half/ two years, then you know, might as well do it.”
Now there are way more angles to this and the VLOG, of course, goes into more detail and is worth checking out but we want to let you know about a really cool offer by clicking here. We’ve teamed up with InMotion hosting for a really amazing offer where they essentially pay for you to take my course and learn how to become a web developer. Links to the offer below as well. -Enjoy!
Should you continue to learn Python, even if Python jobs in the area are more or less in data sciences or other areas you’re not interested in?
So, what if you’re learning a language; Python in this case and you start looking around at possible jobs and realize that all or most of the jobs for Python are ones that you have no particular interest in? Do you stop learning and move onto something else?
“I think it’s a good idea to learn multiple languages, …every time I learned a new language my skills as a developer went <sound of a rocket taking off>, rocket[ed] right up. All these modern languages…they all share so many of the same qualities, but they look at things from a different point of view.” Think of it in terms of hanging out with different friends, even though hanging out with different friends has a lot of similarities: having a drink, talking, laughing, etc, the experience will always be different, ya know?
We’ve said it here before but there is no such thing as a wasted language, because each language learned is like a tool in your tool box, there will be an occasion to use it. Now that being said there are some obscure tools out there and if you’re getting into this business to make money, you’re probably better off learning to use the most popular tools. But, hey, you’re an adult and as you become more experienced in this field, you’ll figure out what’s worth your time…
Check out the VLOG, there’s a lot of great info, including some commentary on Swift and JavaScript. -Enjoy!
New freelance web designers and developers have a choice between freelance sites where you have to compete globally, versus securing web development contracts from local business. But what are the Pros and Cons?
The Job market can be kind of tough, especially when you’re new and don’t have much experience or reputation to bank on. But thanks to technology and the internet, freelancers can work on jobs all over the world and in many different markets. We’re talking about freelance sites like Upwork, Guru, and Freelancer, etc, etc. where you can bid on contracts against people all over the world and how some freelancers have chosen to work in the global market over local businesses.
Pros & Cons: One big con would be that, “if you’re not in India or Bangladesh or if you’re in a richer country where your cost of living is much higher, so you have to charge more…if you’re in the West and you got to compete against people in India and Africa or wherever else on the contracts, it could be daunting. But even on those sites, if you position yourself properly -you develop a reputation, etc, you learn the pricing models <shameless promo>, I talk about this in my freelance course- you can compete, even in New York city with people in Bangladesh.” Btw, another advantage to the freelancer sites is when you bid on jobs, you can offer to do them for free, just to get your experience and start building that reputation.
Local jobs, on the other hand offer much less competition. “Because it’s a local business: likely a small business, <they> are less likely to deal with people overseas because they don’t trust it, they don’t know, they don’t know how to deal with them, they don’t know how to assess anything…they’d rather deal with local talent because they can actually communicate with them, in their language and there is a cultural alignment as well, but you have to go out there and put yourself out there.
I don’t know if you’ve been keeping score or not but unless you’re leaning really hard to one side, they both seem to have their faults and potential upsides, so we’ve come up with a strategy, “first do your foundations, one or two projects, then do a couple of freebie contracts whether it be local or use one of those online sites <Upwork, Freelancer, etc.>,then I would start cultivating both: online and if you can cultivate local business, do that as well.”
The VLOG goes into heavy detail about this subject and is definitely worth you time to check out. No matter which side you pick or even if you decide to do both, just get out there and get what’s yours. -Enjoy!
