Marketing yourself as a developer is the best way to get the word out so you can build a reputation and secure work for yourself, especially if you intend on being a freelancer. Great, so what do I need to start getting myself out there? I’m Glad you asked…there are essentially 3 things you need to get started: 1- Skill Sets (both Technical and Social) – Skills you’ve developed through education/experience. 2- Reputation – The better it is, the better the chance you have of getting work. 3- IP (Intellectual Property) – What have you done in the real world. Projects you’ve worked on, jobs you’ve completed: for free or for pay.
Now, I know you’re looking at this and thinking these are all things that you get by doing real world work, how can I get real world if I don’t have these things? Ahhhhh…the catch 22, my friends…
The short answer is by any means necessary. Go out and do some free work/small project(s) for a small local business (not a long time, maybe 3 months or until the small project is done). At the end of that, yeah you may not have any money, but you’ve just got all three things you need to put towards getting a paying job (it might not pay much, but it’s a start), and when that paying job is done, you’ve got even more skill/rep/IP to put towards your next gig. From there you rinse/repeat ad nauseam and BOOM! work/life balance and a happy ending, LOL. Just kidding,, but it’s a good start.
Wriggity-wreck yo’self on the VLOG for some great advice on this subject from an almost 3 decade experienced ‘warrior of the code’ turned ‘diplomat of the code’, I guess… also a great analogy that might make you real hungry…you’ve been warned. -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!
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!
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?
Look we’ve all been there, man… You’ve got a task to do and you don’t feel like doing it. You put it off… you do the dishes (maybe even clean your entire house), or just play video games and go down youtube’s rabbit hole…
It’s procrastination: pure and simple. You’ve fought it since you were 13 years old and had a 15 page essay to write, due in 2 weeks. But as a dev or a programmer; new or veteran, you’ve got a job to do and you can’t just put things off (for too long, anyway…).
Let’s start off by trying to understand procrastination and then we’ll go into some techniques to combat it…well, ONE technique really but it’s pretty effective. When it come to procrastination there are really 3 problems at play and you could have one, both or all mixed in a cocktail of “I’ll get to it later…”, which is a terrible cocktail cuz it never gets made <baddum-ching>.
1- Fear: Ah yes, that old chestnut… But yeah, fear this isn’t going to work, fear that you’re not going to go anywhere or that you’re missing out on other things, etc, etc. 2- Being Overwhelmed: There’s too much to do, too much to learn, etc… 3- Boredom: This one is pretty insidious. We don’t really have the end goal planned out (the job we’re going to get/money we plan on making, the skill we’ll have learned, etc.).
The key answer for all these problems and procrastination in general is something your mom or even your teacher might have told you (and believe me, I hate to admit they were onto something too)…
…Do 20 minutes a day…
I know it’s so simple you almost have to laugh but it’s true. Doing 20 minutes a day of any activity has so many benefits but I’m only going to list a few here: -It’s an easy to achieve goal. 20 minutes can go by pretty fast and if you find yourself ‘getting into it’ and want to take longer, you can! -You tend to learn much more quickly if you expose yourself on a frequent basis to that activity you need to get done. Some interesting math: 20 minutes a day for 5 days a week (cuz we need our weekends) is 100 minutes. That frequent exposure is going to help your brain learn faster and more effectively than 200 minutes once a week.
I can’t even begin to tell you the length at which this is covered in the VLOG and shameless self promotion: 20 minutes a day is roughly how long the lessons in our courses (link below) are structured for, so don’t have to sit there for hours wondering when it will end with a fried brain. Check it out…after the video game, heh. Enjoy!
We received an email from someone recently who hasn’t worked in the field for about 10 years now. They have a computer science degree and are wondering about our courses and what they need to get themselves seen in today’s market…
The advice in this VLOG is good for both people returning to the fold and for those just starting out, but I’m going to cherry-pick a few good starters to <hopefully> whet your appetite…
– “In the last ten years the big change in the web development field has been front-side development: HTML5, CSS3, etc. and how people work with front-side frameworks a lot more than they did 10 years ago…”
-Freelance work or not, you should have some sort of website up and running. Designer or code-monkey, get something that “legitimizes your profession”.
– Our courses (links at the bottom) teach the basics, it’s true, but we also teach how to build “simple but real-world projects”, that way you can launch right into it. So in other words, “you won’t be building facebook (yet), but definitely the beginnings of facebook.”
-As a freelancer PHP is a good way to go because a lot of small businesses use PHP, but you’ll also get a well rounded education on the “fundamentals”, so you can use whatever you need to get the work done efficiently and quickly.
There’s sooo much more that is touched on in the VLOG and you would really be doing yourself a favor to check it out. In the meantime, check out the links below to the courses we offer. Whether you’re the new kid on the block, curious about freelancing or a grizzled old veteran who just wants to sharpen their skills, we have something for everyone.
People tend to fall into “camps” when it comes to programming languages, operating systems, etc. They swear by a certain operating system or only code with a certain programming language… Simply put, if this is you, you’re going to have a bad time…
To use an analogy, “If I was doing home repairs…[I see] we’ve got some nails to hammer, I’m not going to pull out my screwdriver…”. “When you become a professional developer, you’re going to be language neutral. You’re going to look at all these languages as tools to leverage depending on the circumstance.”
Broken record time: it’s all about fundamentals. Learn your fundamentals, “…because every language, every technology has it’s purpose or has it’s strong points and weak points…with some exceptions, some technologies are just dated…and they’re old school and you’re not gonna use them anymore.”
Generally speaking “noobish developers will say that this language is the best and everything else sucks, and if somebody tells you that on youtube or anywhere else, you know by definition they’re noobs (…except for us LOL).”
Check out the VLOG for some other really fun analogies and a sweet dig at RUBY. It wouldn’t be right if we didn’t dig at it every now and then… Go out there, try it all and save the camping for summer vacation or FPS games!
