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Rocky Kev
Rocky Kev

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How I became a Developer in about 15-ish or so years

(This post was originally written in March 2022 on my defunct blog. Moved it here.)

Follow this roadmap and you too can be a dev in 15 years.

Pre-2006: My road to coding

  • I bought the book Learn C++ in 24 hours. I went to chapter 2 and got stuck.
  • I made Starcraft maps and fumbled through the Source Engine.
  • I wrote really crappy HTML on my xanga site. Tables ftw.
  • I made movies using RPG Maker. I never saved any of them. ๐Ÿ˜”
  • I decided to go to school for video game animation.

2006 - 2010: College years

  • College. I took coding courses.
  • I learned Java. I discovered I suck with Java too.
  • My new life calling - this fart app made $10,000 a day.
  • I dropped out. My mate and I hacked together mobile apps, trying to score that fart app money.
  • I am broken. I suck at coding. I suck at college. I owe a lot of money. ๐Ÿ’€

2010 - 2013: I hate software developers ๐Ÿ˜ก

  • Started attending conferences. It was incredibly hostile and exclusive. ๐Ÿ”ช Very 'old guard'.
  • WordPress development was hot. And community was super nice.
  • Started WordPress themes/plugins. Now I sucked at both Java AND PHP.
  • Still in severe debt. Worked with websites (I did SEO and marketing), but never as a bona fide developer.
  • Wrote scripts to automate things like bots and social media.
  • Minecraft (Java) was getting popular. Should I dig deeper in Java? Haha no. Java is too traumatic.
  • Recieved a Raspberry Pi.

2013 - 2015: People give me money... for code?

  • I hacked Wordpress templates together. Genesis Framework
  • Someone paid me $200 to build them a WordPress site. Am I a developer? No. I built iPhone apps, games and websites. But I'm no developer.
  • I fell in love with jQuery, Bootstrap, FontAwesome, and web languages. (ugh to SQL)
  • People started talking about React, but it didn't make sense.
  • Still building bots. Still creating scripts.
  • I automated a huge chunk of my day job. You can Javascript in Google docs, you know?

2015 - 2017: I am developer now?

  • Job learn I could build websites. They chose to ignore me automating my job. ๐Ÿคท
  • Job told me to build websites. Yer a developer, Harry!
  • Job offloaded me to other people to build websites. I was now doing development for over 50+ hours.
  • I spoke at conferences about marketing, seo. Now I was speaking about web development.
  • Started fully understanding Javascript. And jQuery is starting to show it's age.
  • Data science was getting big. Should I play with Python?
  • React is getting much bigger. I still don't get it?!?!
  • I helped on a Angular project. Why are JS frameworks so confusing?
  • I started working on Laravel projects. I like Laravel.
  • I returned to conferences/meetups. Much more inclusive now ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ๐Ÿ‘จ๐Ÿฟ๐Ÿ‘ธ! The old guard is dead? โ˜ ๏ธ

2018 - 2020: I understand JS frameworks

  • All my friends were into React, Gatsby, GraphQL. Why is this so hard?!?!
  • Finally started learning React (through a Bootcamp), while also digging into Vue.
  • ๐Ÿ™Œ ๐Ÿ™Œ ๐Ÿ™Œ OMG JS FRAMEWORKS MAKES SENSE NOW. ๐Ÿ™Œ ๐Ÿ™Œ ๐Ÿ™Œ
  • Still relying on smashing libraries together, like a crutch.
  • Work was all WordPress, so I took freelancing jobs to do more JS framework things.
  • I lead WordPress meetups, did conf talks, and ran web development workshops. Heck yeah I'm going to make my spaces real โœจsafe and inclusiveโœจ. EVERYONE is invited ๐Ÿณ๏ธโ€๐ŸŒˆ๐Ÿ‘จ๐Ÿฟ๐Ÿ‘ธ! Go suck a ๐Ÿ‹, old guard! (Yes I'm very spiteful.)

2020 - 2022: The age of fundamentals

  • Really find myself understanding the web fundamentals. Vanilla HTML, CSS, JS... real mastery instead of hacking things.
  • I learned that the <details> element is magical.
  • Spent the pandemic focusing on mental health.
  • Started feeling framework fatigue. I could switch between React and Vue. Played around with Svelte.
  • Started writing vanilla everything more, or trying to code things directly instead of finding a crutch like a library.
  • After 4 years, I finally understood testing libraries.
  • Still not going to touch Java.
  • Finally found a real use-case for my Raspberry pi. Pi-hole.

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