Post #10
Holy…! It feels good to be back writing for the blog after all this time and so much has happened! Since the last time we talked about my college experience at lot has happened between school, looking for work as a dev, oh and the studio is DONE!
This one is going to be a short reintroduction post to catch everyone up on what’s happened since the last time we talked in my journey to becoming a software developer. Since we last talked, I’ve finally finished my college Software Development program but, hold the congratulations for now, trust me there’s more to come on this front. Sometime in August the certificate of completion for the program came in the mail. So I can finally say that after two years of formal education I have a really expensive piece of paper to hang on my wall, or more accurately collect dust in a drawer somewhere…
Since then? Well as I’m sure the readers know that I’ve been learning Java development in school but I’ve since switched focuses. I know it goes against some of the earlier blog posts where we talked about looking at job postings for your area and sticking to the technologies that will get you your dream job but let me plead my case. I haven’t given up on Java development, far from it. Instead I thought it would be a good idea to add a few more weapons to my toolkit. I came to the realization that for the majority of junior-level Java developer positions, the required experience details nothing less then an eon of experience in Java plus a whole plethora of other technologies. Hold the comments for now, we’ll take a deeper dive than this in future articles. So what did I add? Well as I’m sure some of you know the articles you’re reading right now are on a WordPress site. There are also a TON of web development job postings out there. So I decided talking a really deep dive into HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript might not be a bad idea if not to make myself more employable then to be able to make a better site for my articles to live and the readers to have a better experience.
On top of these web technologies I’ve added a couple JavaScript frameworks on top of that. Those being React JS and Angular. Why? Stay tuned for future articles where we talk about the job hunt and looking for work as a dev. It’s certainly interesting learning these new tools for a number of reasons. First, my programming knowledge prior to learning the extra tools has all come from formal education. It was interesting to see the differences in progress when teaching myself a whole new technology in a whole different paced sector of the industry from enterprisey Java to the fast paced web world. In future articles we’ll talk about the difference in learning the different technologies and the differences between being formally taught and learning on your own!
What else is new? Well I suppose the biggest news is the studio is done! We’ve got the mics the software the sound proofing and everything else we need to produce a podcast for everyone to listen. The podcast will follow the blog posts but offering a different way for all the readers to inject the discussions in a different way. The first episode has yet to be announced but stay tuned to the JTSD website for information and upcoming announcements. I plan to take listener / reader questions and comments as well as potentially bring on other developers of all types to take part in our discussion.
That’s pretty much the sum of the new and interesting things that has been happening with JTSD. I hope dispute the “fun” that 2020 has brought this article finds everyone well, still learning, still coding and still creating!
Journey To Software Development With Dorian Gosse 