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Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

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Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#231

Post by molifor »

thatcodingdude wrote: post #38
haspok wrote: post #35

How about getting back to the basics? You know, taking some maths classes, CS fundamentals, algorithms, data structures, that kind of stuff. It is timeless, and if you are self-taught, I can guarantee you that you have massive holes in your knowledge. Also, might sound off topic, but learning a new language (not programming, human) could be an amazing step forward, in ways you cannot even imagine now.

Yeah, found out about https://teachyourselfcs.com/ which seems decent enough, it's about time to learn this stuff.

As a self-taught dev, this was a very helpful curriculum. I will say that it can be a little hard to stay motivated on some of these things if you have little chance to apply them, but at least skimming the various topics and understanding the terminology / primitives of each area is a big benefit. For example, understanding what processes and virtual file systems are is helpful even if you're not implementing page tables or whatever.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#232

Post by chrischattin »

TheRealSteel wrote: post #138
chrischattin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% self-taught here. I change $150/hr for full stack Rails work and none of my clients have batted an eye at that. I’m thinking about raising my rates, actually. If you know what you’re doing, I can assure you, making money is not going to be one if your problems.

Could you expand on how long you've been doing it/how much experience you have, and how you go about finding clients? :)

I learned to program for a startup that I founded about 8 years ago. Once people saw what I could do, they asked me to help on their projects.

It's all been word of mouth. I don't advertise, or even have a website for my consulting business. I'm generous with my time and volunteer to teach classes, give talks, meet with anyone who's learning and wants to chat, etc. So, I'm sure that helped.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#233

Post by chrischattin »

erdos4d wrote: post #134
chrischattin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% self-taught here. I change $150/hr for full stack Rails work and none of my clients have batted an eye at that. I’m thinking about raising my rates, actually. If you know what you’re doing, I can assure you, making money is not going to be one if your problems.

Wow, I must be a complete idiot with this stuff because I can't get people to give me even 150 bucks for a full website right now. How do you actually get these 150/hr clients? Please don't tell me I need to work in Silicon Valley for some years and get the "contacts", cause I don't want to live in the US anymore. Tell you what, here's my site: https://www.andeswebdesign.com , if you like it, just send me all your wo…

Probably because websites are commodities at this point. I'd never charge people to build a website. Just point them to Wordpress/Squarespace/etc.

You definitely don't need to work in Silicon Valley.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#234

Post by fendy3002 »

brlewis wrote: post #159
fendy3002 wrote: post #65

Beside SQL which is strongly recommended, it's good for you to know static typings, java and c# comes to mind (haven't tried go, anyone can recommend it or other suitable)

TypeScript is the obvious choice for an experienced webdev. It's worth spending extensive time on to get good. Learn generics and advanced types to the point of not needing to look things up.

I need to mention that though TS is good, it's static typing is optional so op may find it different with java or csharp

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#235

Post by zatel »

mcv wrote: post #140
_benj wrote: post #34

I'm a self-taught webdev too and I would strongly recommend learning SQL, not just `SELECT * ...` but really learning it! I've been digging into postgreSQL and in quite a few applications it's possible to greatly reduce the complexity of the backend by receiving exactly the data you need from the DB. It is so much so that in cases you can even "get rid" of the backend completely (yes, no writing controllers and endpo…

Another option is to learn Graph Databases. I notice there's still a big shortage in people with Graph DB experience, and they're not that hard to learn. Try Neo4J, for example.

As a self taught developer I also found Neo4j's query language (Cypher) to be way easier to read than sql. Especially for building complex relationships between data which I find to be kinda a pain in sql. Also the web interface for viewing your database is really easy to use. Although I should say I've switched to using more sql databases over the past year or two because there are way more hosting solutions that support them out of the box.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#236

Post by vanadium »

jameslk wrote: post #135

Web performance This is an underappreciated field that lends to plenty of consulting. As the web becomes more complex, with heavy frontend code, third party services, and demanding amounts of images and videos, it's requiring a deeper understanding about networking and browsers to keep the web performant. Compounding the problem is the growing number of users who use mobile devices to browse the web, which have large…

I currently do this for major brands as a one-man crew in a 3,500 employee company, and I'll admit, the idea of going it alone as a consultant in this space is _extremely_ alluring. It's just a matter of the right angle to get clientele in order to go it alone, which is the main stumbling block in my case due to time.

The work's consistent and perfectly suited to remote, the engineering teams I'm working with are great and consistently in need of not only the what and why, but the _how_, and monitoring the progress is pretty fulfilling work, to be honest.

Some of the best work I've had in a very long career. I frankly love it.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#238

Post by landemva »

_benj wrote: post #34

I'm a self-taught webdev too and I would strongly recommend learning SQL, not just `SELECT * ...` but really learning it! I've been digging into postgreSQL and in quite a few applications it's possible to greatly reduce the complexity of the backend by receiving exactly the data you need from the DB. It is so much so that in cases you can even "get rid" of the backend completely (yes, no writing controllers and endpo…

Great suggestion on learning SQL. Also, learn how to normalize, at least to 3rd normal form. Clean data, enforced in the DB with constraints, makes debugging easier.

Consider getting a used Jeep in stock form, and get the shop manual. Methodically go through all of the maintenance items. Then start some easy mods, like a block heater. Good life skills.

Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?

#240

Post by linkjuice4all »

jameslk wrote: post #135

Web performance This is an underappreciated field that lends to plenty of consulting. As the web becomes more complex, with heavy frontend code, third party services, and demanding amounts of images and videos, it's requiring a deeper understanding about networking and browsers to keep the web performant. Compounding the problem is the growing number of users who use mobile devices to browse the web, which have large…

I just moved out of the ad agency/SEO industry (using a semi-burner account for that reason) and back into full-stack development. In the past couple of years I put a lot of effort into performance analysis and improvement (mainly site speed but other critical factors) but got very little buy-in from my clients. I was also looking beyond basic "SEO metrics" and the cookie-cutter output from Google Page Speed test and even building a solid ROI model from wasted ad-spend on slow sites with high bounce rates.

Is this something you're seeing a lot of demand for? If so are people actively searching it out or this just a consulting/who-you-know sort of thing?

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