Simon started his career in selling software. As he learned more about the world of software, he gradually transformed into a software developer and freelance consultant. Simon build a SaaS product last year. Here is what he learned from trying to build an audience: About Building an Audience He spend a month on trying to understand his audience without trying to sell anything. His focus was on being helpful and consistently offering help.

Here are some quick notes on the video How to build any kind of app in Flutter (and overcome Tutorial Hell) by Andrea Bizzotto. Learn solid fundamentals first. Try to pinpoint the most challenging features. Read the documentation and create a mental map of the features you need. Build one feature at a time. Find tutorials and examples for a feature, experiment with the code, re-assemble it. Instead of searching for more tutorials, improve the existing solution with what you learned from the documentation.

In this talk, Abbey Perini enthusiastically shares her tips for showcasing your strengths for the job search as a software developer. How to Practice Confidence collect wins set goals (beware the productivity trap) mantras building things (no coding) vision boards find a support network (helpful: other people that are also going through a similar experience) rest & recuperate How to Apply Your New Confidence practice “self-promotion”: it feels icky at first!

Here are my notes from the ~ 45 min talk by Rahat Chowdhury. What is CBT? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a talk therapy where you challenge your thoughts. Example of an initial thought (imposter syndrome): They gave me the job and I don’t understand why. I couldn’t finish the code challenge and the interviewer had to guide me through the process. How will I manage to do this job on my own?

In this ~1 hour video developer advocate Sam Julien shares his tips for shipping faster: tl;dr You’ll need a system that enables you to consistently produce results on which you can get feedback on. Action + Speed + Feedback = Growth How to Create Consistently? The problem: The “Ultimate Guide” Trap: Trying to write a big, all-encompassing article leads to exhaustion and burn-out. You stop writing for months.

In this ~1 hour video David Perell explains his method for writing. The Capture Habit You need a note-taking system for generating better ideas. What ideas should you save? PILE: personal inspiring easily lost (losable) effective (useful) Sources: ebooks, online articles – use a service like readwise. Capture your ideas while you read. Capture things while they are fresh. Writing Modern writing isn’t created. It’s assembled.

Kurt Kemple is a self-taught programmer who learned to code when incarcerated. In his talk with Jason Lengstorf he shares his experiences. Here are my notes from the ~1 hour video: Technical skills are a small part of your day to day job. Kurt learned how to prioritize, commmunicate with others and how to organize the work from his previous experience in construction work and as a line cook. Break a big task into small pieces.

Troy Hunt talks about his journey from a corporate software job to independence in Hack Your Career (58 min video). Troy is probably best known for the platform have i been pwned?. One of the best ways to make yourself more marketable as a software developer is have an active online profile What opportunities are you going to make for yourself? Start a blog. If you are willing to put yourself out there (writing online), you get valuable feedback from others.

Virtual Coffee is a remote community for developers that aim to support each other. They offer “brown bags” which are talks and discussions about a specific topic. Here are my notes from Advice for your first dev role by Bryan Healey: Remember that there will be a ramp-up period. You should take the time to talk to other engineers in your team. Learn about the tooling stack as soon as possible.

Notes from the Twitch stream with Francesco Ciulla and Nacho Iacovino (1 hour 17 mins): Nacho Iacovino is a self-taught developer from Spain who grew his Twitter account in a short time. Here are some tips that he shared. Coding interviews: He learned from each interview. Even if you can’t answer a question, you can go home, research, and then you can answer the question on the next interview. It’s a process.

The goal of the workshop is to learn the mental models and patterns to reduce complexity in software development. The principles from the course are framework-agnostic, but the teacher uses examples from Angular. (I found the concepts front-end centric. That’s unsurprising as the course platform targets front-end developers). What are “enterprise patterns”? The core problem across all enterprise software is complexity. We strive to solve complexity by diligently applying first principles.

These are my notes and summary from the book Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey. 🚀 The Book in 2 Sentences The book teaches you about two kinds of focus: “hyperfocus” and “scatterfocus”. It offers tactics on how to build an environment that’s conductive for better focus and why that’s useful for you. 🎨 Impressions How I Discovered It Last week I bemoaned my lack of focus. I decided to learn more about how focus works to improve my strategies on becoming a better software developer.

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences Stay curious a little bit longer, say less, and ask more questions. Your advice is not as good as you think it is. The book offers a toolkit to become a better leader by giving you a framework of principles and questions. 🎨 Impressions It’s a short book which explains each concept individually, and then offers an actionable script to help you change your behavior.

5 Rules for writing object-oriented code My notes from a Ruby talk from 2013 by Sandi Metz. What are rules? taboos laws norms (customs), group-held beliefs many of are arbitrary and not enforcible why do we follow rules? obedience? self-interest, identity/status, authority, order, social sanctions, ignorance, habit 5 Constraints No more than 100 lines per class No more than 5 lines per method No more than 4 parameters per method No more than 1 instance variable per view No more than 2 class names per controller/action (a Rails-specific rule) Why?

cover image from PluralSight I’m learning Angular right now – as a React.js fangirl. Pluralsight offered a free month of learning in April. I’ve taken advantage of it. Here are some notes on the course Angular Component Communication by Deborah Kurata. Angular Component Communication Introduction components need to communicate with each other, with its template, with the router, can use a service as an intermediary check GitHub repository Communication with a Template template binding, e.

I’m learning Angular right now – as a React.js fangirl. Pluralsight offers a free month of learning in April. I’m taking advantage of it. Here are some notes on the course Angular Services by Brice Wilson. Angular Services What and Why? reusable piece of (single) functionality shared across components (is it like a React hook? 🤔) able to be delivered when and where it is needed components should only contain logic for the view, all other logic should be inside services Creating and Using Services service = basically a TypeScript class @Injectable decorator Provider required Example Service:

Principles of Project Planning by Don Burks is a book for junior developer on how to execute a software project from start to finish. The small booklet is easy to understand and contains some helpful tips for people new to the tech industry (coding bootcamp graduates, freshly minted CS graduates or other career changers). Here are my notes. TL;DR Don’t start a new project fresh from an idea. Take your time to plan the data, user specifications and design.

Methods from prolific learners to help you accelerate your learning We all know that life-long learning is necessary for a successful career path in web development. Tech is a fast moving field. We constantly need to keep our skills sharp. Knowing that you quickly need to learn new material does not solve the problem of how to achieve that. What methods can we use to learn a new technology, framework or language as fast as possible?

About writing beyond academic papers The Art of Writing Effectively is a fabulous lecture by Larry McEnerney, Director of the University of Chicago’s Writing Program, on being an expert and conveying your ideas. The lecture and a related workshop called Writing Beyond the Academy take around 3 hours of time to watch. It’s time worth spending, but if you want a quick overview, here are my notes.