Ok it's been half a year, again, since I've come on to post. On one hand I feel bad, on the other hand I was so stacked out at work it was unbelievable. And now back to the Dojo.
What have I done and learnt in the last 6 months though? I'm not sure about where I was in November, but in my last job experience, I really had a huge PUSH in improving my technical ability quickly and worked so much (sad that my GitHub garden has been so arid though). It's really interesting how much you learn when you have to do something rather than when you're just doing something for a project or to learn. What kind of exclusively technical stuff did I do? APIs - had to hit endpoints to work with different softwares with getting and transferring data, also to check from the software's API. Learned about Streaming API too SDKs - had to write data to the platform using the SDK, data imports IoT - had to set up and configure IoT devices and this involved a lot of bash and some networking skills too Python - lots of Python writing, both for integrations and for regular account configuration. The main responsibility of my role was to configure customer accounts and this was a programming "language" that was built on Python. It's basically Python with guardrails and less functionality, which was really annoying. It took so much time to figure out where the limits were, but it also was kind of cool how quickly I learned it.
That was mostly it, I'll have to think of more as I go along, but I'd really like to get back into software development soon. This was account configuration which is kind of a weird role that's very proprietary to any company. So my goal is to develop more skills that are widely used and more versatile, flexible, and transferrable. It was the job that was higher in labour demand so it was why I ended up doing it. While it was good, I really want to eventually be doing software development. So it's back to the books I go and back to studying data structures and algorithms. And doing code challenges. I hope that this time I really will get somewhere with it. I didn't think I was doing poorly before, but definitely not getting where I needed to go. It seems like there needs to be a good energetic exchange between the opportunity to solve real problems, and the opportunity to study. Too much opportunity to solve real problems runs into blocks on getting something done, and too much opportunity to study runs into the lack of real world motivations to solve things. In any case I feel like I've been swinging between them so my hope is to get to that solid exchange.
Apart from that, I've read a bit of Learn to Program by Chris Pine lately. It's a pricey thin book, but it's also very easy to follow. I know most of it but it's also in Ruby so I've never done that. It's still the same principles so that's cool. It's been an easy read but I'd like to get back into things like CS50, well actually let me just list out everything I would like to get to in the immediate term: Cracking the Coding Interview - bought it ages ago have not even opened it! Data Structures and Algorithms - have a few of these books Python Crash Course - heard some of the interns read this for fun Fluent Python - hue huge book! But I feel like my level is here. Online courses - CS50, I have a React one and SQL one as well Other stuff - BBC Microbit? RPi? Still have these relics from working at balena haha
If anyone is 100% new to programming, the Chris Pine book is really great. I kind of got there from RPi learning.
Anyway hope to start a good journey. Going to try to sleep early and crack on in life. Keep things moving. Becoming more and more technically capable each and every day!
Catt xx