Software Development and Programming Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[TrebleMan]

Relevant:
https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2016-d3a717dd577f#.vogrenoul

I'll come back to post some highlights a little later. Way too tired.

 

[JuditeTormentor]

Cleveland Med Hack-a-Thon.
I think in two weeks here in Cleveland.

Good looking out, breh!! Just looked into it. Suuuuuper salty that I'm already obligated to be somewhere else that weekend. But it's still good information to know!

 

[JuditeTormentor]

Relevant:
https://hackernoon.com/how-it-feels-to-learn-javascript-in-2016-d3a717dd577f#.vogrenoul

I'll come back to post some highlights a little later. Way too tired.

Good read! lol. I was definitely starting to feel like the guy who simply wanted to extrapolate data from the server to be displayed onto a table. I'm just not getting into programming. Finally have the time and opportunity to do so since my interest was sparked. Are all of those changes really happening so rapidly on the front end?

 

[patscorpio]

somebody sticky this thread.

@Abogado can you sticky this thread breh?

 

[KritNC]

@Abogado can you sticky this thread breh?

We have been trying to get this thing stickied for a year now.

 

[TrebleMan]

Good read! lol. I was definitely starting to feel like the guy who simply wanted to extrapolate data from the server to be displayed onto a table. I'm just not getting into programming. Finally have the time and opportunity to do so since my interest was sparked. Are all of those changes really happening so rapidly on the front end?

Trust me man, the only real way is to start understanding "everything" (meaning just what you need at the moment) out there is by jumping in and trying to solve the roadblock that's in front of you. Reducing your scope a little to not get overwhelmed.

Think of a total app you want to build and start building a very small part of the beginning of it or a very small feature of it. Maybe you need help with even getting it started and that's completely fine, because chances are you'll need to look up something about every feature you're going to add. Little wins and what your learn along the way as you're building will lead up to a full app.

Best way to keep up with the changes and tech are to build with them, and even then there was a funny reply on reddit, something like: Spend the next half year to master the "next cutting edge" and by the end of those 6 months, you'll be a year behind the advancements we made in programming.

It's really just something everybody faces. But one constant though is getting down vanilla Javascript, something I want to go back and do as well.

This is one of programming's biggest names and was responsible for creating Erlang having trouble with the modern day languages and features:

 

[kevm3]

The key to programming? Learn to make something. It's simply impossible to 'know it all' and 'master it all'. You won't be able to come on the front end and be a master of React, Ember and Angular 2. There's no reason to either, since when you start mixing in additional libraries, they essentially end up doing the same thing. You simply have to experiment a bit, find which one you like and then ride with it and not look back. Then go take that and focus on making stuff. Don't try to figure out every single nuance before you start laying down code, because you will never get started because things are always changing. Just make something.

 

[JuditeTormentor]

The key to programming? Learn to make something. It's simply impossible to 'know it all' and 'master it all'. You won't be able to come on the front end and be a master of React, Ember and Angular 2. There's no reason to either, since when you start mixing in additional libraries, they essentially end up doing the same thing. You simply have to experiment a bit, find which one you like and then ride with it and not look back. Then go take that and focus on making stuff. Don't try to figure out every single nuance before you start laying down code, because you will never get started because things are always changing. Just make something.

This was incredibly helpful. I'm OCD, so I obsess over minute (often extraneous) details. And I always find myself looking back, never satisfied with a decision (even when I know for a fact that I made the right choice). So comments like this are helpful b/c it gives a reason to ignore my impulses and push forward. The only thing that helps me overcome my OCD symptoms is logic. Once I see that it is logical to let go, I let go. So this comment was very helpful b/c it allows me to internalize that moving forward does not hurt or handicap me with respect to developing as a programmer.

 

[JuditeTormentor]

Trust me man, the only real way is to start understanding everything out there is by jumping in.

Think of a total app you want to build and start building a very small part of the beginning of it or a very small feature of it. Maybe you need help with even getting it started and that's completely fine, because chances are you'll need to look up something about every feature you're going to add. Little wins and what your learn along the way as you're building will lead up to a full app.

Best way to keep up with the changes and tech are to build with them, and even then there was a funny reply on reddit, something like: Spend the next half year to master the "next cutting edge" and by the end of those 6 months, you'll be a year behind the advancements we made in programming.

It's really just something everybody faces. But one constant though is getting down vanilla Javascript, something I want to go back and do as well.

This is one of programming's biggest names and was responsible for creating Erlang having trouble with the modern day languages and features:

I'm only a third of the way through the video. It's awesome. Definitely makes me feel much better about mine own bewilderment! lol. I appreciate your feedback, as well. It makes a lot of sense. It's funny that I've always told my students and clients the same thing--that small steps culminate in grand scale results. So I need to personalize that message for mine own self!

 

[kevm3]

This was incredibly helpful. I'm OCD, so I obsess over minute (often extraneous) details. And I always find myself looking back, never satisfied with a decision (even when I know for a fact that I made the right choice). So comments like this are helpful b/c it gives a reason to ignore my impulses and push forward. The only thing that helps me overcome my OCD symptoms is logic. Once I see that it is logical to let go, I let go. So this comment was very helpful b/c it allows me to internalize that moving forward does not hurt or handicap me with respect to developing as a programmer.

It took me a while to figure that out. I read tons of programming books cover to cover, and thankfully, I'm getting to the point where I'm reading about the same concepts over and over so I don't feel like I'm 'missing something'. After you've gotten a decent grasp of the basics like loops, conditionals, what variables are, what functions are, etc., then find a book that has a project and focus on just building stuff. You will never come to a point where you perfectly understand every little nuance and where you will be perfectly fluent and comfortable with programming.

The one piece of advice I can give to new programmers is that you will ALWAYS be learning something new and you will never know it all and you will have to prepare for confusion and frustration and just learn to stick it through. In the midst of confusion and frustration, you just have to dive in and keep pushing forward, and slowly, but surely you will start piecing things together and things will become coherent. You will go through this process over and over, so learn to love it and you will be fine.

 

[kevm3]

The problem with a lot of the modern programming languages is that they are stuffing so many new features in it, it's hard for a newcomer to know what he or she needs to know before they can start doing stuff. There's stuff like Observables, generators, promises, yada, yada, and it gets confusing and overwhelming. In reality, most of those are just language shortcuts for basic operations. The stuff you need to know to start doing things and which spans across most languages are things like conditionals (if, else, switch), loops(while, do-while, for), variables and their types if your language is typed, functions and a few more things.

 

[TrebleMan]

I'm only a third of the way through the video. It's awesome. Definitely makes me feel much better about mine own bewilderment! lol. I appreciate your feedback, as well. It makes a lot of sense. It's funny that I've always told my students and clients the same thing--that small steps culminate in grand scale results. So I need to personalize that message for mine own self!

I'm going edit my statement earlier based on kevm3's recent posts too, but when I say "understand everything" what I really mean is understand enough about what you're trying to get done right now and your knowledge will grow. Because just like what kevm3 is saying, complete understanding is really a pipedream at the moment. The way I see it is it's you vs a ton of people who are coming up with advancements everyday. No one person can keep up.

Just have to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable regarding not knowing everything.

 

[MrPentatonic]

C# dudes, anybody ever worked with API's before?

 

[IronFist]

I need to start delving into this thread.

 

[Data-Hawk]

Alittle off topic. For the longest time, I didn't see the need to have 2 monitors. My job kept asking and I was like "naw I don't need it". Then one of my co-workers left and they told me to take it til they hire somebody else. Took about an hour to get used to it.

. Bruh this shyt boost your productivity like crazy. I'm like " how was I so damn late on this". About to cop another monitor for home use. I highly recommend this setup if you don't have it already. You'll get work/learning done much faster.