Did that guy just suggest reading Twitter and Techcrunch are requirements for being a web developer? Not impressed...
How to construct a web developer in twelve months
11–20 of 40 posts
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#12All items on the list sound reasonable, but I think it should be ordered the other way around. Begin with play and build . If you spend to much time on reading and research on the beginning without actually getting your feet wet you might get overwhelmed.
I've fallen into this trap as of late... definitely need to shut up and tinker...
There are so many wavering viewpoints and opinions on topics like Rails vs Django, what to use when, does your framework hinder acquisition possibilities, etc, that you can easily wander off path; Above all else: Play, build, learn.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#13You can't be a web developer unless you can code. I think a good exercise would be copying a website. When I say copy I mean the whole thing front end and back end. Start with something easy like twitter. The whole front end is pretty much done for you. This is not super simple but I don't think you can become a developer in 12 months with no code experience anyway.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#14One thing I think is missing from that list.
Sign up for Lynda.com.
Find a subject for instance jQuery or PHP or JavaScript
Just watch it don't do anything to get a feel of the bigger picture.
Then Watch it again start doing some of the things and start to experiment.
That at least helped me learn to code although I am still very much a rookie.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#15All items on the list sound reasonable, but I think it should be ordered the other way around. Begin with play and build . If you spend to much time on reading and research on the beginning without actually getting your feet wet you might get overwhelmed.
This is the first thing i thought as well. Build should be #1. The reading you do should directly support your building (finding help on HN or SO that help you solve the specific problem/bug at hand)
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#16Did that guy just suggest reading Twitter and Techcrunch are requirements for being a web developer? Not impressed...
I signed up for a Twitter account (which I've since deactivated) when I attended a jQuery conference in Boston a few years ago. The live tweets that went around were not only hilarious, but also relevant to the discussions. In addition, I started following some developers and discovered some great links via tweets (for instance, Paul Irish tweeted his coding standards a while back, which I think is a great read for any developer and their team. http://na.isobar.com/standards/)
Do I think Twitter is a requirement for being a web developer? Definitely not. I agree with you (and voted you up.) But, I do believe, if you follow the right people, it will help you become a better one.
My only reason for deactivating it was because of Hacker News (and other aggregate sites) - A lot of the great content on Twitter ends up (or begins) on sites like HN.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#17Typically it should only take 9 months to construct one. Some prerequisites apply.
actually 9 mom months. so 1 month with 9 moms working on it.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#18I agree with absolutely every point on that list, and I definitely wish I had read something like that when I was starting out.
The only thing I would add: Be curious. Eliminate as many magical black boxes from your day-to-day work as you can. To some extent, yes, you should be playing around and experimenting. But some of my most rewarding self-taught lessons are from diving into areas that I took for granted (how a web server works, jQuery and Django's core, protocols, etc) and exploring until I felt like I had a good grasp on what was happening. Those monstrosity config files for things like Apache and PHP? Delete them. Now watch them fail. Learn what the default are, the bare minimum that you need to get it up and running, and expand on it. Find the areas you're uncomfortable with, and beat the living hell out of them.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#19At first glance, this looks like a nice list. I really have nothing bad to say about anything on it.
It's a list of 12 items without much guidance about how important each one is and how much time to spend on each. To put things in perspective, I think that BUILD should be > 90% of your time.
I'd like to share my personal experience with OP's list. Please understand that this is not advice, just one programmer's experience of what works for me. Perhaps I'll try some of OP's recommendations, but I'm not sure...
READ Hacker News
An hour or two every day for 4 years. Thousands of comments made. Hundreds of bookmarks saved. Oddly, not sure how important all of this has been contributing to my work. It's been very important contributing to my sanity. I'm alone most of the time except for my cats and you guys.
READ Stack Overflow
Never been there.
READ a bunch of other stuff
I just follow links from Hacker News front page. Lots a great stuff out there. Still, not really sure how much benefit has been to my own work.
ATTEND local meetups
I have. I don't anymore. Met some nice people. Didn't help my work at all.
ATTEND OpenTech 2011
Never heard of it.
FIND an itch to scratch
Have built about a half dozen things for myself. Not really much use for others, but a great way to practice with new technology.
RESEARCH cloud
Good idea, but my experience limited to Amazon.
RESEARCH HTML5
Good idea, but haven't done much.
JOIN Twitter, Delicious
Never did. Probably never will. Unless I see some good reason. (I haven't.)
PLAY
Critical! I play with stuff every day.
BUILD
90% of what I do. Oddly, I look at very little other code, but I do try to reverse engineer a lot with what I'm already playing with.
POLISH
I do nothing mentioned by OP. I just refactor, scale, and fine tune as I see fit.
I'd like to add one more thing to the list:
FIND A CUSTOMER
You'd be surprised at how fast you get good when you have to.
Re: How to construct a web developer in twelve months
#20Typically it should only take 9 months to construct one. Some prerequisites apply.
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