DEV Community: Alex Gwartney

What I have been learning from the job hunt.

Alex Gwartney — Tue, 17 Aug 2021 23:06:56 +0000

So as the title states I want this post to be about what I have learned from the dreaded job hunt so far.

I have recently, been applying for work, and going through the interview process. And I can say with out a shadow of a doubt, be prepared to be rejected. Because its going to happen a lot.

I don't say this to be negative, but Its more of a reality when hunting for your first job. You will get a ton of advice on how to go about doing it. But nobody really tells you just how dam hard it really is. Unless they are a new dev them self's.

My past three interviews I thought all went fairly well. Most specifically my last interview I just got done with. I went through three rounds of interviewing. All with high praise from the company all to just receive the "The decision came down to start up experience and a few more related projects.".

So this leads me to my one main piece of advice when job hunting managing your expectations. As its easier said than done. Its going to suck your going to get mad. Your going to want to quit, but don't.

Take the feed back take literally anything away from the interview that you can. Keep learning and filling in the gaps, and keep applying.

I'm contusing to follow this advice till I land a job. And I hope to come back here one day and follow up with this statement. But in the time being, just know its hard you will go through a lot of trial and error. And the biggest thing is manage your expectations, don't let these companies set your own self worth, and realize its just business..

Just know if your on the same path your not alone. But just because your not alone does not mean it doesn't suck. Embrace it learn from it move forward till you break through. As again the only person who is going to get you a job is your self.

Feel free to share your journey down below. And I hope you all who are the hunt best of luck as well!

When should you use rest api for rendering vs server-side rendering?

Alex Gwartney — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 04:42:51 +0000

So hopefully the question makes sense. But I'm needing some guidance. When you are using something like laravel. When should a rest api be used to consume, and display that data using a client-side framework such as vue? Vs using something like blade templates and letting the server-side render the view and just pass the data to the template?

Would be happy to get any guidance on this as im sort of just confused.

Thanks!

College vs Self Taught vs Boot camps | Which one should you choose?

Alex Gwartney — Sun, 07 Mar 2021 23:44:07 +0000

Hello, everyone!

Today I wanted to discuss the good old debate of college vs being self taught or choosing to go to a boot camp. More specifically discuss my thoughts on which to choose and the routes that I have taken.

So give the video a watch and let me know what you all think. As well as what decisions you all made I'm really curious to hear your thoughts.

what programming language should you learn?

Alex Gwartney — Sun, 28 Feb 2021 22:47:58 +0000

If you are a beginner trying to break into web-like me. Choosing a programming language for web development can be a confusing topic full of several rabbit holes so where should you get started!

Well, let's get into it!

So before I dive into this topic I first want to go into how I first got into web development back in 2012, when flash was still king and Javascript was getting more and more popular. And word press ran the internet.

While I never really pushed hard enough to get into web at this time, choosing a path was so much more simple. There was not the flood of new frameworks and libraries being produced on a daily basis like we see today. There was also not this war between which javascript stack you should choose. Or if you should become a front-end or back-end developer and which language and stack are the best for learning which. The list goes on, in short times were much more simple.

After a long pause and deciding what I wanted to do out of high school back in 2012 I fell off the web development field and decided to give it a real shot in 2015. And when I did it was like looking into a massive sea full of new language frameworks and libraries. And in this I just sort of jumped into the most popular thing that was going on at that time. Which was the MEAN stack.

And so from there, I got started I spent several months hacking away at awful projects and trying to keep up with the on the onslaught of updates that came with this stack. And after a while, it never really led to anything but burn out on my end. So I went a different route once again, to later find that I really do like programming more than anything. But I couldn't stand the stack that I was in.

This leads me to my first main point I wanted to discuss. When you are first starting out you are going to see so many videos like TOP programming languages to learn in 2021. Or why the blank stack is the best for getting a job. And so many other discussions and topics on the internet about the newest and greatest thing. And while it's good to know what is out there and on the so-called bleeding edge of tech.

Do not just choose it because everyone else is doing it. This is where I made my mistake, and why I failed the first time around at becoming a successful web developer. I tried to stay in something that was just not clicking and did not have the time to spend to keep up with everything that was changing.

What you really want to do in my honest opinion is choose something that after working with it for a while, you can feel confident enough in it to build and teach just about anything you want with it. Now with this I also know there is advice out there stating oh but choose what the market wants in your area. While this is also solid advice, with jobs being remote nowadays and not everyone living in a massive area with a lot of businesses ect like me.

Why should you pigeon yourself to what one small part of a market is using? When you can apply to just about anything out there! The idea is to get your first job and get the experience. Not trying to become the next engineer to work on the Mars rocket.

That comes with time. Now over time and once you get experience in a language you are comfortable with, this is when I would say branch into what is popular. Spend the time to make it comfortable for you, this way if you decide to swap. You again can become confident in it and make your projects really show this.

Now another thing you also want to take into factor with all of this. Is when learning a language that is the most popular new one on the block. Like javascript, you are also going to be competing with every single boot camp Septuagint and college grad out there. That did something I did and that just chose what is the most popular because so many people are driving the hype behind it. So keep in mind what the overall competition as far as who is learning what rather than what company is using what.

So with all of this in mind, what language should you really learn? Well, I personally chose PHP, now this is not to say you should to. As there are so many other great languages out there, for the web, such as ruby, C#, Javascript, ect the list can go on and on. But from a beginner like me to the beginner's like you, here is why I chose this.

Number 1 it has been around the block for a while and has had time to mature as a language. There is a lot fewer people wanting to learn it, and companies are still out there using it and its still has a big market. Meaningless beginners and other boot camps out there that I would have to compete with on top of people already in the industry.

Number 2 would be the learning curve for the stack is much easier, and much easier to choose from. There are still quite a few frameworks for PHP, and ways of using it. However, in comparison to javascript, it's night and day. As with PHP a lot of the frameworks are a one-stop-shop and don't require you to use a front end and backend framework to make a project. Making it much easier to learn and in less time.

Lastly, I chose this because of learning SQL and the ease of use it provides. Now if you have never used SQL or no the difference when you hear things such as no SQL graph QL ect. Do some research to see what you like. I again personally like the structure that comes with it and the ease of use to quickly spin up a project.
So in the end while I can tell you here are the top blank languages in 2021, I want you to personally go outlook at the languages sees the resources out there for them.

Look at the frameworks and the documentation and other resources associated with them. And really think to yourself, is this something I can see myself using in x months to x years? And really run with it for a few months, like a test drive of a car. Don't do what I did and dump months and months into one language just to find out you hate it and want to start over.

While Im happy where iam now and my own path. I regret spending so much wasted time that could have been spent test-driving the language. And giving myself a yes or no answer. And with this advice, I hope I can help you make your own decisions on which path you want to take!

And lastly, I do hope that whatever language you choose, you all end up happy with your choice!

Google Firebase Good or bad?

Alex Gwartney — Wed, 06 Jan 2021 00:56:55 +0000

So over the past few months now I have been diving into the deep end with Vue. With this, I have started to figure out the extreme usefulness of firebase to spin up a database.

I have found being able to do a simple api call and have everything set up for you so convenient. As it allows me to rapidly prototype my project without dealing with the added back end. I found it even more satisfying how quickly I can use authentication tokens. Rather than having to again set up my own back end to handle session IDs ect.

However, I do currently look at this as a prototype as I can see that this probably would get expensive for separate hosting ect. Rather than using a normal domain hosting with SQL ect and PHP. I will say that its great though if you are wanting to stay within the front-end realm.

What do you all think? What are the drawbacks of using this service? What do you all think the pros to it? Really curious to see the community's thoughts.

Why I failed to get a job as a programmer. And how I plan on changing this.

Alex Gwartney — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 01:20:01 +0000

As the title states, this post is going to be the long-winded journey of how I tried and failed more times than I can count to get off the ground and get a job in the industry. This is by no means a blame game this is more things watch for yourself and hope to help others learn from your own mistakes.

So let's start all the way in the beginning. I first started programming web and taking it seriously back in 2015. I was going to school at this time as well. I was like everyone else I was trying to blog I was trying to learn the newest thing on the block etc. And at some point I made a few projects launched my portfolio, I even started a podcast. Things were looking ok, I finished school in 2016 which that's a topic for another post. I started to apply and went down the road of rejections stories of awful recruiters the works.

Now inevitably I ended up falling off the train, I got a job as an IT help desk and then hated every minute of it. Again a story for another post. I have since been working back in the glorious hell of customer service. I have since however continued to try so many other ave of programming. I have attempted android graphics programming if you see my older post. I even tried getting into game dev. Which by the way was actually pretty fun.

But none of this in my journey since ever helped. So all of this aside what happened. Well, let's start with motivation burnout out and why goals don't mean anything unless you learn discipline. Over this time I have learned a lot about my mistakes. I learned that motivation is useless as it's like a drug that gets you high you ride that high for a while and then you crash and burn. It's why all my other ideas of game dev etc failed as well.

It came down to the simple fact that I would keep hoping for the new thing as soon as the old thing would get hard/motivation would get lost. Now, this is only part of why I failed, the other half has to do with the simple fact that when I initially was applying I fell into the other trap of I'm never ready to apply. And on top of that, I thought my stuff was the greatest thing since google.

This is also where I learned that TODO list applications and random weather apps are about as useless as they come. And nobody including you should care let alone use them as a portfolio project. They are great if you want to solidify your skills in a specific stack, otherwise don't do it.

I also ran into this other thing where I sadly became that person who just would talk about doing x thing but would never really take it seriously and see it through. Which goes back to my initial part about discipline. I have met so many people over the past decade now. That a lot of them never make it out of tutorial land because they just can't sit down and do what they say they are going to do and then fall into that cycle.

So these and many many more things are the reasons why I failed as a dev. Not because of the market not because of the tools I was using not because I couldn't pass an interview ect. But really all because of the lack of discipline to follow through.

So now that I have said that and hopefully you all are still with me at this point. This is how I have turned myself around. I wanted to wait to post this as I wanted to actually get the discipline down before I once again went down the road of just saying I'm going to do x. Since the beginning of I would say September I have set out once again to break out of retail hell and get a job in the industry. I have successfully been building a few projects relearning and finishing courses and have a lot to go.

But I'm going to be once again reviving my blog and I want to start sharing some more in-depth advice of things I have learned along the way from my past and current experiences. As things progress I will be doing a whole lot more. But I have learned to really stop telling people about it and just do it. So as things progress I will be announcing different projects I have in mind.

Overall to sum up this post, if you're currently finding yourself in some sort of cycle that seems to never end. Really think to your self have you stuck with it? Or are you just the guy who can talk the talk but can't walk the walk?

Also, I welcome you all to share your thoughts on this. As well as any stories you may want to share with the community. I feel there are not enough how I failed and plan to change stories. And to many of the, I did x and succeeded but didn't show the failures.

How do you familiarize your self with a open source project.

Alex Gwartney — Fri, 25 Dec 2020 10:15:37 +0000

I hope every one is having a good holiday weekend. I wanted to post this as I recently have been talking with a few friends of mine regarding getting into open source for beginners. I have seen so many tutorials about getting into open source. But not one of these tutorials actually explains how to get familiar with the code base. More specifically how to even find the files where a bug maybe at and then how to start breaking that down to possibly find a solution.

Generally when your on a job you would get trained and have mentors ect helping you get familiar with different parts of the project. So my question is for you all that have contributed to open source projects. How do you suggest going about figuring everything out for the first time?

Front end frameworks which one to use?

Alex Gwartney — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 22:07:17 +0000

So lately I have been spending the better half of the past month learning how to use Vue js. Now my core reasoning behind this is that I heard the learning curve was a lot lower and would make it easier to understand other similar frameworks such as react.

Now in the past, I have used angular I swapped to vue and have been enjoying the structure of components, etc. Now my question is for you all that have used other frameworks such as angular react etc. How do you choose which tool is best for what. Or do you just use what you feel is easier to use for you?

Personally, on my own projects, I try to go with the path of least resistance and not choose the shiniest thing in the toolbox. While something may not have 1k features to it if it gets the job done and works well why change it.

So what are your thoughts I'm going to assume 99% of responses are going to react, but really curious as to the why?

Explain Javascript Closures

Alex Gwartney — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:12:09 +0000

So could someone give some examples as to how closures are useful? As I get its way of not using global variables. and you access it by creating two functions and returning the nested function.

Other than this I really don't see where or why you should use it.

Windows vs linux?

Alex Gwartney — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 18:36:44 +0000

So I wanted to create a short post here and get some opinions from the community. Since I have gotten back to the web dev game I have been looking into what was a better OS to make my workflow faster.

I originally used to use a mac and have found that it was great for my development environment. But I have since moved back to windows and have found that well it lacks a lot of stuff. And is a huge pain when it comes to the command line and being able to install things.

Which brings me to my topic I have started using Linux on my laptop as a test. As I have found that the command line and the ability to install things on it is just night and day. For setting up a development environment. But It comes with the drawback of having to go the extra mile of running wine to use certain windows programs ect.

So my question to you all is which do you prefer. Also is there a way of setting up a fast windows environment to get a similar cmd?

Coming off a hiatus in 2020 and looking forward to a new beginning!

Alex Gwartney — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 00:48:29 +0000

So I want to start this post off by simply stating I am back! The past couple of years has been nothing but a massive roller coaster and as the title states, I am ready to go for round 2. So here I am once again starting up a new journey back trying to break into the web dev industry.

For you all that don't know who I am or what I am even remotely talking about let's get into a little bit of a back story. You may want to get something to drink as this is going to take a little while! I originally started the idea of getting a career as a programmer back in 2016. I was really hyped I went to school graduated with my associates and was ready to take on anything.

Little did I know a lot of my time was personally wasted since. I spent hours upon hours learning as much as I could about web development. But I sadly fell down the endless rabbit hole of never feeling like I could apply. So I settled to go into IT instead.

I became a help desk support for a hospital for a miserable year of my life in 2018. While I was making a lot of money and I learned a lot. The graveyard shift took a toll on me. So because of this I jumped ship and living in a small town it sadly is hard to find any real IT work. So I had to settle for working as a tech support rep for a pretty neat company called Glowforge.

I did this for the better part of 2019 before I realized working for a new start-up team for a company that was a start-up itself and had no direction of what they wanted from us at the time was just not for me.

So here was where I feel like I hit the bottom of the barrel. Since I left I needed a job fast, so I sucked it up and went to work for Walmart.... Ironically they did pay quite well, due to the experience I had working in IT. But as you can assume Wallmart is Wallmart and I never was able to get full-time work. So I once again found my self looking for a new job.

Which leads me to where I am now Im again doing technical support for a neat little startup out of long beach CA called Zwift. They are a cycling MMO yes your heard that right. And you should look it up sometime.

While I like the company I currently am contracted under, I bring my self into 2020. I am tired and burnt out on these types of jobs. They don't ever really pay well and just don't have the career growth that I want.

Which brings me to my original title. I have decided after a lot of thinking and playing with a lot of other ideas that I am going to charge full force into the web development game. I have picked up where I originally left off and feel pretty good about it.

I have overall learned that you will never feel fully ready and have to just go full force and go for it! Because of this, I have also been pursuing my other hobby of INDE game development. I even started a youtube channel about that progress. But that is a story for another time.

My current goal though is to keep hacking away at code for about the next 6 months or so. Just to ramp my self back up to speed as web changes so much and so fast. I will be building up my portfolio and then at the end of the next 6 months ready or not. I will begin applying for remote work.

In the time to come, I will be coming on here from time to time to post progress as well as tutorials ect. I have also decided to open up another youtube channel project as well. Which will come in time but for now this is where I am at!

I am really hoping that this time next year I will be looking at this post happy with life in my new job as a front end web developer!

So I hope you guys enjoyed the post and for you all that are in the same boat or are just learning your self. Don't let the feeling of being ready ever stop you as it will do more harm then it will good!

Just SHIP IT! Tips for finishing up your project.

Alex Gwartney — Mon, 29 Oct 2018 15:36:51 +0000

So I recently made a post about finishing my first game prototype. That has taught me a lot. One of the things it has taught me that I have had struggled with. Out side of school due to not having some sort of dead line is just finishing a project. I found that a lot of my projects would either never get finished or would take just way longer than it ever needed to. So I wanted to give some of my tips on just shipping it. I also would like to get all of your opinions on the matter as well.

With that said lets get to it! My first tip and I cant stress this enough would have to be. Fully under stand what it is your wanting to make. This may seem sort of obvious but In several cases there has been times where I start a idea that starts off as one broad statement. Of what that idea is and I start working on it but half way through the project. It begins to take on a million other ideas that completely deviate from the main one. And due to that it just ends up either never getting finished or just turns into a utter mess. So its good to have a clear goal in mind.

My second tip is closely related to the first one. And that is by having a solid Idea of what it is you want to make. You should also have a solid idea of the minimal amount of stuff that should go into it. In order to make it. Meaning when starting the idea write out what you think would be the bare minimum you need to code in order to build what you want. This way you are not starting off your project coding a billion useless features.

The third tip is tied into the second. Which is keeping your scope small. If you write down the bare minimum that you need to finish your project. You will then be able to set the scope of how big its going to be. And in order to ship with in a decent amount of time. You want to keep this scope small.

The fourth tip and while it may seem like a obvious thing. Would be not to get tempted to start adding random features in the middle of the project. I have fallen for this several times. Where I would do all the steps above. But some where along the line I would have a random Idea in the middle of the project. That sounded like it would make the project better. And started to implement it instead of working on the core features. Which just causes a even bigger mess in the first place.

Lastly when working on a project set some sort of dead line for your self. Now this is something I do with most of my projects. As I dont want them dragging on for ever. Make sure to set a date and try to stick to it the best you can. If you go over that date evaluate where you are in the project. And try to either wrap up where you are. And just get it out the door and move on if possible. Or expand your deadline enough to wrap it up. But dont fall for the oh ill finish it next week or the next week ect.

So hopefully these tips can help you ship it. And again would really like to get some good tips from you all. I hope you guys have a good week!