11–20 of 66 posts
If you have a deadline and a paying customer who is counting on you to produce something, then you'll quickly learn how to learn quickly.
I would start with codeacademy and once you do a couple of the courses on there build a website.
Once you master OOP/ the basic concepts....for loop, output statements, switch statements, arrays, etc....
The original poster will need to start doing web development which is a different ball game. I've been using onemonthrails.com and it has been pretty effective especially if coupled with a programming mentor.
Like many people here, I agree that there is nothing more important than building things that you can show people. However, the process of getting to that level of capability can often be somewhat mystifying. There are a few tools I recommend for that. First of all, interactive tutorials, like those at Code School, are fantastic introductions to web frameworks, if you're just getting started. I first learned Ruby on Rails with Rails for Zombies. However, these tutorials will not give you the skills to actually build anything—rather, they are a good primer. From there, find a good book, preferably one that focuses on actually building something, like Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial. Finally, I really love to use screencasts (a la Railscasts) for picking up domain specific information for particular tasks. Hope that helps!
Second, a relevant question:
I've just recently started freelancing myself, and I see a variety of advice. "No Rails developer should make under $75/hour!", "Take what you can get, work your way up slowly!" "You probably charge too little!", etc. How do you actually evaluate how much your skills are worth as a freelancer? How do you match with clients who need and are willing to pay for your particular skill level? If anyone has any links to relevant advice, those would be great to.
Golden Rule: Do things, tell people. Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. Eventually you'll get to a point where you can work in places where coding skills do matter, like dev studios, startups, big companies etc, but for non-tech small to medium businesses, they only care what you've done, not what the quality of your code is. You can make a d…
Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied. Edi…
A few important things to note from my (limited) experience:
- How much you are worth (per hour) as a freelancer is largely based on your existing body of work and your network of contacts. As such, you might not be able to make your stated figure straight away - instead as an average when your earning potential rises with each completed job.
- Go around your local community first. A lot of people say that you shouldn't work for friends/people you know, but when you're starting out you need portfolio pieces and people are far more likely to take the risk on someone 'green' if they get some face-face time now and then. Local restaurants and clubs was where I started.
- Contract up ... always >.- Specialise a bit. There seems to be a commonly held belief that freelancers should be full-stack engineers - largely because you are likely to be working solo on projects. Not only is this not realistic given your learning timescale, but I've also found it to be untrue. If a project needs work that you can't do then you sub-contract to another freelancer. They will be happy for the work and there is always the possibility of payment in kind. One caveat is that you obviously take on the risk of the contractor messing up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied. Edi…
I wonder if somewhere there's a forum where electricians or plumbers discuss things like these... "Most people don't know the first thing about how wiring works." On second thought, maybe I don't want to know!
You can even take up contracts on oDesk or similar if you're not finding enough local opportunities.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously, coding skills matter less in the real world than you think, those will get better with time anyway. I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. The thing to remember is that most people don't know the first thing about how stuff works on the internet. So you could have the shittiest spaghetti code in the world, but if the site looks and acts like it's supposed to, 99% of your clients will be satisfied. Edi…
I wonder if somewhere there's a forum where electricians or plumbers discuss things like these... "Most people don't know the first thing about how wiring works." On second thought, maybe I don't want to know!
First, advice: Like many people here, I agree that there is nothing more important than building things that you can show people. However, the process of getting to that level of capability can often be somewhat mystifying. There are a few tools I recommend for that. First of all, interactive tutorials, like those at Code School, are fantastic introductions to web frameworks, if you're just getting started. I first l…
They are worth what a client will pay.
Trick: if you show a client “this will make you $20K in 6 months for this, this, and this reason, as I have done for this, this, and this client”—they don't care how much you make an hour. Bid $8K for the project, even if it only takes you a week, and they're still crazy happy.