Coding
I'm not a CS major of any sort. In fact, I only took 2 programming classes in college. Truth be told...I initially did not like it after my freshmen intro course. But by my junior year, I saw the practicality of it and decided to give it another go.
Starting out, I did some pretty simple things. My freshmen intro class went over the fundamentals in C++. The class I took in my junior year went over Databases and Visual Basic.NET. I was "skilled" enough to create simple desktop applications on VB.NET. The following summer at my internship, I built a tracking application in VB.NET that connected to a MS Access database.
As an industrial engineer, I was taught to think and analyze data in a certain way to make decisions.I often thought about how I can "automate" the data-collecting process and display the conclusions in real-time. This would allow users to spend more time "doing" and less time "thinking". I was fascinated by what I can automate. This was pretty much why I took my first job out of college as an Industrial Engineer in the Decision Support Systems group. I was fortunate enough to have such amazing mentors and teammates. Not only were they able to think about business operations in a strategic level, they were also able to develop software solutions to implement their plans. In the semiconductor manufacturing world, this was next-level shit. We were doing things that only a few companies in the world could even dream of doing. As the new kid, I learned and learned and learned and learned. This was how I got into web programming in ASP.NET, C#, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.Â
But after I quit and took a position at another company, I began to plateau. I wasn't learning new technology. I wasn't the new guy anymore. I think at some point, I became complacent with what I can do. Frustrated by my lack of growth, I finally signed up for a course in HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript. In my opinion, I felt that I could improve in those areas. I never really had formal web dev training so this was very insightful for me. It reinforced a lot of what I already knew but it also exposed me to some of the industry's best practices.Â
I'm very eager to begin coding away again. I don't really care what I'm building. I just want to do something and put myself out there. To brush up, I'm currently using the following resources:Â
-Â https://dash.generalassemb.ly/projects
-Â http://tryruby.org/levels/1/challenges/0
-Â http://www.codewars.com/
-Â http://www.teamtreehouse.com/
-Â http://www.hackdesign.org/lessons
-Â http://www.bentobox.io/
I spoke with my cousin (still in high school) recently and I'm thinking about joining him on a project. It's PHP based (which I'm unfamiliar with) so this would be a good opportunity to pick up that skill.Â














