Builder Begins

This blog chronicles the 3-month training I will endure to become a developer.

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Free resources to learn web-development

Javascript

CodeSchool or Treehouse’s Javascript learning path (Paid) OR Codecademy’s Javascript course.

Eloquent JavaScript

You Don’t Know JS

JS: The Right Way

Learn ES6 by Egghead.io

HTML & CSS

CodeSchool or Treehouse’s HTML & CSS learning path(Paid) OR HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites by John Ducket OR Codecademy’s HTML & CSS course.

Specifics on CSS Specifity by CSS Tricks

Learn CSS Layout

SMACSS

9 basic principles of responsive web design by Froont

Responsive Web Design Fundamentals by Google on Udacity (Take if you didn’t use CodeSchool or Treehouse learning path)

Managing Mobile Performance Optimization by Smashing Magazine OR Browser Rendering Optimization and Website Performance Optimization by Google on Udacity.

Web fundamentals by Google

Developer Tools

Explore and Master DevTools by CodeSchool

Learn Git by Codecademy and Try Github by Codeschool

Introduction to Linux Commands by Smashing Magazine

Automate Your Tasks Easily with Gulp.js by Scotch.io

AngularJS

Design Decisions in AngularJS by Google Developers (Intro to AngularJS)

AngularJS fundamentals by Egghead.io

John Papa’s Angular Styleguide

Creating a Single Page Todo App with Node and Angular (MEAN) by Scotch.io

AngularJS application structure by Egghead.io (Paid) OR Scotch.io’s Angular Courses

ReactJS

Learning React.js: Getting Started and Concepts by Scotch.io

Intro to webpack by Egghead.io

React Fundamentals by Egghead.io

Leveling Up with React: Redux by CSS Tricks

Back End

NodeJS tutorials by NodeSchool.io

How I explained REST to my Wife

Creating a Single Page Todo App with Node and Angular by Scotch.io (Node, ExpressJS, MongoDB, Angular, REST)

Origin: https://medium.com/@sgarcia.dev/my-journey-to-becoming-a-web-developer-from-scratch-without-a-cs-degree-2-years-later-and-what-i-4a7fd2ff5503#.pumnc1vol

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Final Weeks: would I recommend code-schools?

TL:DR; No, unless you’ve had some pre-exposure to web-development and especially programming.

Most code schools across America are a couple of months and cost a little over $10,000. I’d say if you have enough discipline and free time, you could spend $300 on a coupe of discounted Udemy classes supplemented with free courses and be just as good.

Why I don’t recommend code-schools yet is because they’re all still in their infancy and lack so much structure. A lot of times 20 students are dumped into a room with a super smart developer....who has no idea how to teach. There is no homework or exams, so nothing really to either measure your growth or nothing to continually shame you into making sure you know that material.

The only good thing that can come from a code school (if you’re lucky) is their connections to the industry with hopes that they bring someone in that will hire you. Which then  begs the question if you want to be hired as a mediocre beginner but get paid peanuts because you’re still learning on the job ... or if you want to take more time building on your skills and hold off on a job until you’re more seasoned and get hired by a good tech company that knows how to treat you well.

At the end of my code-school journey, I feel like I’m still incapable of handling basic whiteboard interview questions or even javascript questions. I understand loops and Angularjs a lot better, but I can’t do anything from memory; I’d always need my notes as reference.

To those who think about joining code-schools, I recommend at least getting real education through community colleges ($5000 degree for my hometown) with good reviews first (this way it doesn’t corrupt you with bad practices), then going to code-school for the sake of exposure to variety of languages, this way you’ll have the fundamentals.

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My journey to becoming a web developer from scratch without a CS degree, 2 years later (and what I…

First, let me introduce myself; My name is Sergei Garcia, and I’m a full-time front end developer with 2 years experience, and in that time…

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Week 12 and 13: accepting the uncertainty but endure ...

I’m cheating with this post because I forgot to put an entry last week. I’ve been going through depressions on an off, but it was after reading the last resource in its entirety did I find that developers will always have doubts and uncertainties. in class, my instructor said something like:

Professional and noobies make almost the same amount of mistakes. Sometimes the professionals make more mistakes, but the difference is that they know how to recover from the faster.

I’ve got like 3 weeks left of coding bootcamp, and I can’t help but feel a sort of “senior-itis” where coming to terms that the end is near. I’ll be done with school, probably spend a lot of alone time brushing up what I learned and applying for a lot of jobs. In between, I should be attending more meetups or hackathons to build a presence in the community.

With the school I’m attending, I’m guessing they’re aware of the doubts and just flood us with more projects to keep or minds off of it. Times like these I wish there was a week where we would go back and do smaller exercises or projects to boost our self-esteem then utilize the rest of the time to build our final project so it’ll be more polished.

I feel like I’m still in phase 2 with the cliff of confusion.

If I could time travel back, I wished I pushed myself even further. But given the outside stressors (lack of health insurance, money, living conditions, etc.) I can’t put so much blame myself on me as I could on the school since their still in their infancy figuring out how to structure the class. Sighhhhh, can’t play the blame game. Instead let’s come up with a plan for what’s next:

Polish up the projects I have that demonstrate a variety of technologies to be showcased on my resume.

Stop worrying about perfection and start applying to jobs and be sure to follow up with them if they don’t respond in a week. Or, investigate their company website to email application directly to HR.

Research and work on my final project.

After graduating, be sure to revisit my old work and do exercises to re-familiarize with past tools and measure growth by doing online exercises.

The icing on the cake: study the “crack the code interview” books and dabble in some CS concepts.

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Why Learning to Code is So Damn Hard

What every beginner absolutely needs to know about the journey ahead

‘nuff said

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Hey all. I'm a recruiter in the tech industry working on an expose of coding bootcamps. My experience with them - both from my perspective as a...

To future code school students, know what you’re getting yourself into.

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Week 11: placebo effect?

Class is starting the LAMP Stack now and backend stuff feels a lot easier. Not sure if it’s because MEAN Stack was really my first exposure to programming and having to do a lot of logic-based programming has prepped me for this ... or if it’s because LAMP Stack barely deals with any logical problems and it’s more about hooking bunch of code up to servers and databases.

Either way, work is getting a lot easier but a bunch of projects, interviews, job-hunting tasks, etc. are overwhelming me as graduation nears.

To give an idea of what’s on my plate:

Review AngularJS, MongoDB, NodeJS to build an e-commerce site

Study data structures (because employers’ biggest complaint of code-school students are our lack of knowledge in this topic)

PostgreSQL (open-source vs Oracle’s more expensive/complicated version)

Find at least 5 jobs to apply to

Reach out to recruiters/staffing agents I met at a career fair

Review whiteoboard probelms

Prepare for upcoming hackathons/nodebots day

I know it may seem like an overwhelming list, but the key to managing it all is to do it one checklist option off at a time rather than dabble in a little of everything.

At the same time, with graduation coming soon, there’s always the stress of landing a job soon to pay the bills or end up homeless or shipped back home to live with my parents and be branded as a failure. :\

To get out of any depression, it’s always good to get out of my study-barrier and out of the house (no PokemonGO). I’m planning on visiting some old friends or treating myself to a movie—Star Trek Beyond is coming out, woot!

Note to self: Option + Shift + - to make an em dash.

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Learning about databases? PostgreSQL is a good beginner open-source db and you can find web exercises in that link.

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Week 10: preparing for interviews

website: cultureofdevelopment.com/blog

What are you into? Know the kinds of problems you want to solve (education, poverty, business, healthcare). Update list every 6 months of what's important to you (benefits, money, vacation, bringing your dog to work, etc.)

2 Kinds of Recruiters

1. Contingency recruiter (30-40% of your salary, have only their interest in mind) 2. Retaining recruiter (employee of the company, do whatever they can to keep you)Companies treat you as either: cost vs profit center

Acronym: TEDPG

Target: tell company you want to work for them, mention the problems you want to solve, “I want to work with your amazing team” Experience: how long you've been working with other people Depth of knowledge: get rid of bad bullets or tech soup (spelling out acronyms of the MEAN/LAMP stack). Passion — ‘nuff said. Get things done

Cover Letter should only be 3 paragraphs — don’t write a novel.

Open with your interest to solve the company’s problems (heathcare, education, poverty-alleviation, finance, etc.)

What kind of value to do you bring to the team?

Circle back all the points made, thank them for consideration and how you’re looking forward to hearing back from them

When you go for interview, expect to meet 3 to 5 times through different interviews for a company.

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AngularJS Tutorial | Code School

Angular allows your application to have an expanded HTML library. Learn to add behavior to your HTML and speed up your application’s responsiveness.

LPT: Do code school exercises as a review, rather than an intro. While reviewing the course, be sure to use the ‘slides’ to refresh how code snippets look.

If you use code school as intro courses, they’re not as forgiving as codecademy and getting stuck feels extra frustrating because there are no ‘hints’ or positive reinforcements to let you know you’re on the right track.  You’d just have to answer the questions correctly to move forward.

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Week 9: there’s only forward

I’m a little over the halfway point until my graduation comes. Now that I’ve got so much exercise and theory down, I can really start pushing myself even further to polish what I’ve learned.

In addition to reviewing everything I’ve learned, I’ve now got the additional tasks of getting career-ready. This means talking to recruiters, tune-up my resume, get my portfolio of projects spruced up, and other verbs that deal with polishing.

Here are some sample interview questions:

https://www.interviewcake.com/

After talking with a staffing agency, they recommended that I capitalize on my network here and build experience as a junior developer before I seek my ultimate goal of freelancing in another state. It’s smart, but I really want to have a completely fresh new chapter elsewhere even if it entails the stress of getting familiar with a new city--there’s just a certain thrill that comes with that kind of pressure.

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Week 8: found my groove

First, a little break from coding camp by providing directions on how to install Sultan Rom on your rooted android phone (specifically the oneplus):

Materials:

TWRP Recovery image

CM13 Snapshot image

Sultan ROM image

Google Apps page image

Directions

Download TWRP recovery 3.0.2-0, drag its image/img file into your phone while it’s in ‘recover mode.’

Next, download and flash the latest official CM13.0 snapshot.

Then, without rebooting from recovery, wipe /system and flash Sultan ROM. This process is necessary to update various firmwares (including TrustZone), as the updated firmware is needed by Sultan ROM.

After flashing Sultan ROM, flash a Google apps package, SuperSU (ONLY v2.65 OR HIGHER) if you want root access, and then reboot.

For more details, visit the full guide here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/oneplus-one/orig-development/rom-kernel-unofficial-cyanogenmod-13-0-t3242700

Now back to your regular program............................

Coding camp is getting a lot better now that I found a regimen that I can stick with. My teacher pulled me aside and suggested the same touch-typing exercises that I came up with on my own. The sad thing was he didn’t even know what my weaknesses are or what I need to improve on. Despite being such a small class I expected him to be able to monitor my progress...but that’s tough when coding bootcamps don’t offer tests or do performance metrics on their students.

I’m halfway through the program and have to start looking for developer jobs. It’s more work, but if it means getting a better future and starting a new life chapter, then I’m game.

https://medium.com/javascript-scene/learn-to-code-13-tips-that-could-save-you-years-of-effort-92ce799a3e1f#.uue1mcm5a

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Week 7: time to super saiyan up!

This whole week was dedicated to a group project. At times I felt kinda useless not being able to keep up with the logic side. Every once in a while it’s healthy to have something guilt trip you into getting stronger.

Stayed up late a lot doing tutorials or building an understanding of what my classmate contributed or expanding on what I was already good in (pushing our work to github).

I’m still sticking with just one training regimen and being persistent is crucial to seeing consistent progress.

Just finished an episode of super and felt this gif was a nice metaphorical battle between me an coding bootcamp:

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How to clone from specific Github Branch

Here’s the terminal code:

git clone {{http://urlofyourrepo.git}} -b {{insertbranchnamehere}} --single-branch

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Contribute to free-programming-books development by creating an account on GitHub.

‘nuff said.

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Week 6: know thy own self

In summer school or coding camps it goes without saying that the learning goes insanely fast. But what you have to ask yourself is are you digesting the material fast enough?

Sometimes you have to acknowledge that it’s not enough to just go to class and sit there to be spoon-fed with information. You have to find out what learning style or methods work best for you.

My classes are on a work schedule, 9 to 5. Between that time, I have to go home, rest, cook dinner, then try to either do homework or make my own homework to reinforce what I’ve learned. If not that then find materials to get ready for the next day. Here’s a “day in a life of a coding student”

Wake up, drive for 45 minutes to get to class

9-5: lectures, exercises, occasional pair-programming that goes on too long

Drive for 1 hour to get home

Quick nap for 10 minutes

Cook dinner/lunch for the next day (1 hour, plus wash the dishes)

2 hours: try to find homework to do, or find materials to watch, exercise, or read for the next day because the concepts go by too fast.

Point of this entry, know yourself well to a point you know the best way to learn. Don’t blame people for inability to learn materials. If you’re an adult, you’re at a point where you know what’s NOT going to work--maybe listening to lectures isn’t the best way to learn, then stop what you’re doing, go home and rethink your strategy on what’s the best way to get the job done.

Here are some learning strategies/methods:

Watch video tutorials with captions on/double the speed

Read guides

Do practice simulations

Take an existing project apart

Build a smaller scale of what you’re looking to build

Talk to people who have done the project already, get their perspective

Ask questions in forums/participate in online communities

Write out the problem in analogies or diagrams

**On a sidenote, I’ve been trying to track this song as a reaction video for bad reviews. Got it from a mychonny video:  Sung Shi Kyung  -  한번의 사랑

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Week 5: learning through immersion

Things are getting kinda exciting. I’m back to learning at full speed, which has its ups and downs. But it’s come to a point where thanks to all the supplemental exercises I provide myself and preparing for the day before helps me get sorta immersive in the code without realizing it. The closest I can describe this phenomenon is when Bart learns French:

I’m not working on even more projects. Lots of recruiters have already been tracking me.