It’s strange to say and hard to believe, but four days ago I started my first web developer job.
I’m an extra-junior developer – also known as a technology apprentice in the local parlance – at VMLY&R.
If I’ve learned anything this week, it’s that I have a lot to learn. Here’s the rundown
Angular AND React
Who knows which of these I’ll start with. Honestly, Vue is the only one that’s appealing to me, so the frameworks will probably keep getting pushed down the priority list until I really have to learn them.
TypeScript
I’ve gone through about 16% of a TypeScript tutorial so far, and the main takeaway has been: TypeScript is anal JavaScript.
AJAX and JSON
This is something that LC101 introduced me to, but I know I am far from having these skills mastered. So I went back to the Udacity course that LC101 recommended on the subject and it SUCKS. I’m glad I didn’t waste precious homework time on it the first time around. It’s a bunch of “here’s what JSON stands for” and “ooh look, it’s Facebook making an asynchronous request.” That’s all well and good. But then it’s like, here are some starter files! Go use the Google Street View API to retrieve an image based on info submitted to your page and display it as the page’s background??! It was obviously time to abandon ship as I didn’t even know the first step in that process.
So I head over to my PluralSight course: “Hands On AJAX.” And that’s going great until the teacher announces that you have to be running your files on a local server to make these sorts of requests??
As far as local servers go, we used MAMP in LC101, but that was to build a site with a database using MySQL. I literally don’t know what it means to be developing a site on a local server without that very specific context.
So I ran away from that course as well like the strong-willed, persevering person I am. What else could I do badly, I wondered? How about…
Columns, Flexbox and Grid!
When I master these skills, even though I’ll only be a 1% better developer, it’ll feel like I’m 85% better. I want to make things pretty but these friggin’ divs — they never end up where I want them. Text gets aligned weird no matter how many times I tell it to text-align: left, dammit! Luckily, the CSS tricks website is a beautifully-designed godsend and I’m excited to keep digging in.
Honorable Mention: Not Drupal
The team that I’m assigned to (I’m not sure what the rules are on talking about the work I’m doing here, so I’ll just say I’m working for a certain automotive company you’ve definitely heard of) has, like every team here, its own stack. As far as I can tell, that stack largely includes AEM (a CMS), JavaScript, TypeScript and Java.
A couple of the other LaunchCoders are on the Internal Projects team and their stack includes Drupal and PHP. Hearing them talk about it I’m just like:
Those are the skills right at the top of my list of things I want to learn — anything to be able to quickly make functional, good-looking websites. Mayhap someday!
Andie from KC 