Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please feel free to privmail me and I will try to share some ideas.
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Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
271–280 of 326 posts
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
> and if you are self-taught, I can guarantee you that you have massive holes in your knowledge Just curious, why is being self taught a guarantee for having massive holes ? Can you give some likely examples ?
My best guesses for likely examples: - Pointers and understanding how operating systems address/access memory at a low level. - Hashing (This one may seem a little insulting but I have seen otherwise good developers confuse hashing with encrypting and it seems like an easy mistake to make if you haven't worked specifically with either concept) - Binary math, logic, and encoding. - The OSI model. - Parallel programmin…
For anyone not aware, Ben Eater on YouTube does a really good job explaining a lot of these topics
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not OP, but I think there are two main reasons for this. Firstly if you are a professional you probably only had time to teach yourself what you needed for the job at hand. This is a great skill in and of itself but by definition it favors practice over theory. Secondly, if you're self-taught that means you didn't have a mentor and likely you don't know what you don't know. It's impossible to study topics you've neve…
> It's impossible to study topics you've never heard of If only there was some way for people to communicate these linked topics in some sort of portable written format!
Steve ?
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#274> specialize more
With how rapidly the web changes, I would consider specialization a wart on your resume. Web developers have to be generalists. I'd keep doing what you are doing: learning new things.
I'd learn some other back-end language. C#, Java and Rust come to mind. You're very strongly tied to the scripting/dynamic ecosystem.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should learn C. Life is too short to struggle with C++ now that we have better alternatives such as Rust. You can also ignore the people who ignore the complexity of web apps. Classic C programs are very often much simpler than full web apps IMHO.
Modern C++ is fairly easy to learn. At-least easier than either Rust or C.
This language is so extensive and seemingly has so many dialects that I find it really hard to make sure that what I'm learning is modern C++.
Can you recommend any literature?
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#276Very few webdevs know it, but they should all learn it, with a gun to their head if necessary: restraint.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#277play with SwiftUI!
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t know if it’s guaranteed, but here’s my perspective (as someone with 2 BScs and an MSc, who also self teaches a ton of stuff): My personal drive for self-teaching generally stems from either a specific problem I’m trying to solve on a project or a desire to dig deep into something “cool” I’ve come across. In the first case, I’m tugging on the strings that seem most likely to get me to the solution to the probl…
Well said. I can relate to this as self taught. I don’t work in the SE field though so I feel no need to learn the silly whiteboard interview puzzles. It’s never been a hindrance to making my ideas come to life.
Heh, the closest I've come to "silly whiteboard interview puzzles" was back in undergrad competing in the ACM Programming Competition stuff. Our team made it to regionals a few times, but we never really took it all that seriously.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
It's incredibly popular in the ecommerce world where every 1kb reduced is a lot. Target large ones - they often use Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Hybris, BigCommerce, Magento. Also any business with embeddable products and SDKs. No one is happy to make their page heavier with a script they don't own. Fintech comes to mind. Analytics companies too. Anything with complex dashboards. Anything tailored to power users - CRMs…
My experience with e-commerce sites is they they tend to accumulate enough tracking and ad network scripts to ultimately kill performance.
Re: Ask HN: Self-taught webdev with lots of free time. What should I learn?
#280I'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.
Also learn to denormalize. Because performance matters.