DEV Community: Avery D

Landing the First Job

Avery D — Tue, 17 Dec 2019 20:15:47 +0000

There are so many things to think about when searching for that first dev job, and even more to keep in mind once you actually start. The best tips come from those that have been there before, so let's check out some posts from different folks and see what methods and strategies they used to succeed.

If you’re looking for an internship or freelance work to start off, don't be afraid to put yourself out there. Let the DEV community know you are looking for work. Ravi has these tips on applying for internships:

Find the right point of contact
Keep the intro short
Talk more about what you can give to the company, less about what you’ll take away…

How to apply for Software Engineering Internships at startups

Ravi Ojha ・ May 23 '19

#career #startup #internship #tips

After you have some experience under your belt, make sure you know how to market yourself for full-time positions. Update your code on GitHub, add your DEV articles to LinkedIn, stay in contact with connections that have had positive work experience with you, and reach out to mentors and the community for advice. We suggest getting experience with open-source projects as a great resume builder.

Starting that first job can be stressful and nerve racking, as Amanda points out in her article Self Care for Developers don’t forget to:

Celebrate how far you’ve come 🥳
Be thankful to those who helped you get where you are
Practice overall self care

Self Care for Developers

Amanda Sopkin ・ Jan 22 '19

#discuss #productivity #selfcare #career

Remember that even senior developers are constantly learning and making mistakes. Never be too proud to admit and grow from these. If you take responsibility for your actions and communicate effectively even when situations become difficult, then you are acting as a good teammate.

50 Things I Wish I'd Known at My First Developer Job (Part 1)

Jacob Herrington (he/him) ・ Aug 19 '19

Looking for Your First Dev Role: Advice for Young Devs by a Young Dev

Tori Crawford ・ May 23 '19

#codenewbie #firstyearincode #career #beginners

Transitioning Into Your First Junior Developer Role

James Hickey ・ Mar 12 '19

#career #beginners #tips

We hope that this four part series gives you the tools you need to succeed as a beginner dev. Follow the #career, #internships, and #beginners tags for more articles to help you get your start.

If you’re a senior dev or in a hiring position, how do these tips level up to what you are looking for in beginners?

How to Start your Career on DEV

Avery D — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 17:57:37 +0000

Becoming a developer can start at any point in one’s life. As the importance of coding has grown, so has the demand for programmers. Thousands of students of all ages are currently training to work in this bolstering industry. We are going to look at how you can start your dream career by leveraging the resources available right here on DEV.

Experience > Degree?

Many devs have pursued a career in programming with a structured degree in computer science or through formal training in boot camps, but not every dev takes the same path. Some go straight into the workforce through freelancing, while others have degrees in completely different subjects but code on the side for fun.

Freelancing 101: How to get started

Kelly Vaughn ・ Dec 26 '18

#freelancing #career #webdev

Read up on the type of programming career you want, and ask yourself the important questions.

Do You Need a Computer Science Degree to Be a Developer?

Patrick God ・ Mar 9 '18

#beginners #career #computerscience

Internships

A great way to gain experience is through internships where you’ll have the opportunity to learn from more experienced developers and get a feel of what career avenue might interest you. Check out dev.to/listings to find mentors, internship listings, and networking events. Interning can be done for experience-only or college credit, but there are plenty of employers that pay their interns well.

There are Many Paths

Just as not all programming careers start the same way, they also don’t need to end in the same way. Do you want to pursue front-end, back-end or DevOps? Do you want to lead a team of devs? Do you have a financial target that you want to hit? What is your end goal or even what does a successful career look like to you?

It's okay if you don't have all the answers now. The important thing is that you build a solid foundation to learn on and keep all your options in mind.

The best thing to remember is that your path is different than your peers and even your mentors. Reach out to other DEV members and chat about their career maybe get some advice.

Reminder

You are going to make mistakes, you will get a lot of “sorry but we’ve decided to go another direction”, you will need help. That’s why we’re working hard to make sure you have a community that supports you when those times come. Be patient, your dream job may not be your first job.

Article No Longer Available

In the next part of this series, we will discuss the resources beginners have here on DEV.

Spotify Wrap-up: The Best Holiday

Avery D — Thu, 05 Dec 2019 17:28:47 +0000

Every year Spotify does an annual wrap-up that is filled with your favorite tunes, how many minutes you spent listening, and your favorite genres/artist.

This year at the end of the decade they really made everything look amazing.

2019 Wrapup

{Not sure if you can see the wrap-up w/o Premium}

On the dev side, what do you think?

Check out how this fashion site shows products

Avery D — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 16:12:45 +0000

Came across this dope site with a lot going on, wondering what Devs think when they see sites like this?

https://shop.manrepeller.com/pages/play

Share your 2019 Halloween Costumes

Avery D — Thu, 31 Oct 2019 19:50:12 +0000

The winner gets a spooky Dad joke! 👻🎃

Top 5 DEV Comments from the Past Week

Avery D — Tue, 29 Oct 2019 18:35:49 +0000

This is a weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.

Everyone is looking for love and @aimerib tied the knot this weekend. Wish the newlyweds well in the What's your Win this Week? thread:

Aimeri Baddouh • Oct 25 '19 • Edited

I'm getting married tomorrow! That is one of my biggest wins!

@nateous finds the best of both worlds to use Microsoft's license agreement in Issues with VSCODE License — You should worry:

Nate • Oct 27 '19 • Edited

Microsoft has code in their version that they don't want you to decompile. That is all. Hence the license agreement.

I still use the version from Microsoft on my Mac for personal projects. If I don't want Microsoft to watch what I do with their software I'll compile my own version. Until then, they will continue to update the software based on the usage data they track. Best of both worlds if you ask me.

Puzzle coding test has a time and a place, but @jeremycmorgan as a manager says these don't make or break a candidate in: Unpopular opinion? I don't do puzzle coding tests:

Jeremy Morgan • Oct 25 '19 • Edited

In my opinion these tests are not an accurate representation of a coder's abilities, however I think coders should learn this, and get good at it.

As a developer I started running into these tests and not doing well on them. So I started practicing them and getting good at them so I didn't fall on my face in an interview. I learned a few things about algorithms that helped me be a better developer.

From a manager standpoint, sometimes I would give these out as well, however I found good programmers who did poorly on tests and vice versa. So I didn't base my hiring on how they did, but rather just looked at how they think. How they solve problems.

I think every developer should at least practice and try to get good at these kinds of tests. There are things you'll learn in the process that will help you as a developer.

@sidvishnoi shares that JSON.stringify(obj) may not follow property order, which matters when the serialization is input for hashing/checksum in the The Secret Power of JSON Stringify thread:

Sid Vishnoi • Oct 22 '19 • Edited

Regarding the second items white list (array) argument:
We can use it to create a simple object hashing function (similar to object-hash, but with limitation of maximum object depth 1). The important thing is, JSON.stringify(obj) may not follow property order, which matters when the serialization is input for hashing/checksum. Instead we can pass Object.keys(obj).sort() as the 2nd argument, and the JSON will be stringified in that property order only.

function objectHash(obj: object): string {
  const str = JSON.stringify(obj, Object.keys(obj).sort());
  return createHash('sha1').update(str).digest('hex');
}

View code snippet for client-side at GitHub
View code snippet for Node.js at GitHub and tests

Ever thing of NPM as Legos? @dansilcox walks us through NPM in the eyes of a 5 year old in this explanation: NPM Explain to Me like I'm five:

Dan Silcox • Oct 23 '19 • Edited

You want to build a cool spaceship out of Lego - someone else already made a rocket engine, a fuel tank, some grid fins and a launch tower - so you use NPM to find and get the premade components to build your space ship faster. Then, when you launch you realise that because nobody verified that the components were secure, someone hid a stow away on your spaceship 😂

See you next week for more great comments ✌

The Great Debate: Spotify or Apple Music?

Avery D — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 17:42:16 +0000

I've gotten into many fights with friends, colleagues, and strangers about this debate.

Which is better Apple Music or Spotify?

Personally I think Spotify is a clear winner, however, I am bias cause the last time I used Apple Music (AM) was when songs were .99 cents. Even then I usually illegally downloaded songs from YouTube.MP3.

My argument for Spotify:

The end of the year wrap up: How many times you listened to your favorite song, your favorite genre of the year, etc.
Try Spotify for free as long as you want (but once you try that 3 months free, you're hooked)
Spotify for students ($4.99/month) includes HULU (summer only) and Showtime
UI is pretty equal but if you're a fan of the "dark mode" trend then Spotify is for you
Spotify's billboard ads

Top 5 DEV Comments from the Past Week

Avery D — Tue, 15 Oct 2019 14:52:37 +0000

Hi everyone!

Avery here, taking over for Peter this week. Enjoy the weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.

We all make mistakes and in the What is your debugging approach? thread @mohanarpit forgets to remove printf but owns it:

Arpit Mohan • Oct 8 '19

Grep through the logs for any obvious issues or errors. With decent logging, 50% RCA happens here.
Try to replicate the scenario in local environments and see the bug in action.
Keep adding printf statements after each line of execution. Occasionally use the debugger as well on local to triage the issue.
Forget to remove printf statements when committing fix.
Create hotfix commit to remove debug logs 😄
Actually deploy fix to production.

@cjbrooks12 brings out the math skills to figure out DEV's production database in How large is the dev.to production database 🤔:

Casey Brooks • Oct 8 '19

I believe all uploaded images/videos are stored on a CDN, so I will not include them in my estimate. But let's get a few other numbers to try and get a better estimate.

This article has an ID of 186129, so I'll round to 200k articles for easy math.
The text in an article doesn't take up much space at all. I would guess most articles are a few KB in size, and the largest ones less than 100KB. Let's go with a median estimate of 50KB per article.
The most popular articles have a couple hundred comments, but most are probably around 10 or so. - Comments are much smaller than articles, so lets go with an estimate of 1KB per comment.
The homepage for logged-out visitors has "239,226 humans who code". So let's around to 250k registered accounts. I couldn't even begin to put an accurate estimate on the size of each account record, so lets just say 10kb to account for a bio, linked URLs, etc.

So let's do the math!

(200,000 articles * 50kb) + ((200,000 articles * 10 comments) * 1kb) + (250,000 users * 10kb) = 14.5 GB

I'm gonna put my official guess at 25 GB. Text-based media takes up much less space than you might expect!

Pulling up with graphs and breaking down blockchain @jmfayard tells us to work smarter not harder in Is Blockchain really changing the world at all?:

Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard • Oct 11 '19 • Edited

Hello, I have a boring answer for you.

Blockchain is neither useless nor it is likely to be a revolution.

products matter more than technologies

Blockchain is not a product, it is a technology.

New products that solves a real important problem in the real world can cause a revolution. That usually do not require a super sophisticated technology.

Wikipedia is built with PHP. It is a genuine revolution.

The guy who asked doctors to wash their hands before helping women to give birth caused a revolution.

The technology used there? water.

The result? Countless millions of women stopped to die.

Bitcoin is a product. But it solves as a problem that almost nobody has: there is no single Central Bank on Earth that I trust more than I trust my own cryptographic skills.

Bitcoin's main use case is: unregulated internet gambling.

It's pretty good for that to be honest.

the technology

What about the technology?

It is a technology at the peak of its hype cycle. Or maybe on the descending phase.

Lots of blockchain fans love to use complex words.

But what you have to understand is that Blockchain is basically two things

Blockchain is a merkle tree structure - better known to us with the three letters git.
Blockchain is a distributed consensus protocol.

The first part (GIT) is very useful, but it's not new. It is git

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git#Data_str...

The second part is new, but it's almost never the simplest solution to a given problem.

People are always asking the wrong question.

It's not: can we build dev.to on the blockchain?

Yes you can, but there is a much simpler solution that works.

The consensus algorithm is also terribly wasteful. If you care about climate change, and more generally about energy, the first thing you should throw away is the whole blockchain industry.

the right vision for the future?

The point about "democracy" are usually fake.

Trusting no-one is not the right ideal to strive for.

In the dark ages, we trusted no one.

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future | by Kai Stinchcombe | Medium

Kai Stinchcombe ・ Apr 9, 2018 ・
Medium

@avalander uses the iconic line from the Princess Bride to format an introduction in What's a better way to start a conference talk than "Uh... okay, so I guess it's time to get started?":

Avalander • Oct 12 '19 • Edited

Hello, my name is Iñigo Montoya and today I'll talk about why you killed my father, prepare to die.

Is usually a good format. Avoid filler words, state your intent and move on.

Another option is to start with an interesting fact loosely related to what you're going to talk about. People love learning silly things.

Did you know that potatoes originally come from Peru, where they have more than 1200 varieties of potatoes? In that sense, potatoes are a lot like Javascript frameworks.

I strongly dislike speakers that start with good morning or whatever and expect the audience to answer back and then they're like c'mon we can do better than this or I can't hear you, like, this is a conference Brad, not Bikini Bottom.

And speakers that start with I have a lot of slides, so I'll try to finish on time lose me immediately.

Finally, @worsnupd reminds us that objects as lookup tables come with a +1 in The Art of Refactoring: 5 tips to Write Better Code:

Daniel Worsnup • Oct 10 '19

Great article! An important thing to keep in mind when using objects as lookup tables is that objects have prototype chains that will also be checked if you are not careful. Look at this example, using some code from the article:

There are a few fixes for this:

Create the object without a prototype (Object.create(null)):

const pokemon = Object.assign(Object.create(null), {
    Water: 'Squirtle',
    Fire: 'Charmander',
    Plant: 'Bulbasur',
    Electric: 'Pikachu'
});
// pokemon.toString does not exist!

Only check the object's "own" properties (hasOwnProperty)

function getPokemon(type) {
  return pokemon.hasOwnProperty(type) ? pokemon[type] : 'Mew';
}

As you also suggested: Use a Map which inherently doesn't have this problem.

Thanks for the content!

</div>

See you next week for more great comments ✌

Say Hello to DEV's Newest Intern!

Avery D — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 18:48:37 +0000

Hi Everyone!

My name is Avery and I have been a Business Development and Growth Intern here at DEV for 1 month now. So far it’s been...GREAT! I’ve been able to work on some amazing things here this past month. Working on the Daily Challenge Posts, social content, and am getting ready to see some of you at Hacktoberfest. I’m really impressed by this wonderfully supportive corner of the internet and want to share it with developers everywhere.

I have very little development experience but have worked with many different software companies in the past. I currently go to Butler University in Indianapolis but am spending my semester in Brooklyn. I’m a marketing major but want to pursue a career in Operations and Project management. Because I’m not a developer I spend most of my time on #careers, #beginners, and #internship.

My job, like everyone else at DEV, is to support this community in any way I can. Please reach out if you want to know more about me or to discuss the importance of post-it notes.

DEV Community: Avery D

Landing the First Job

How to apply for Software Engineering Internships at startups

Ravi Ojha ・ May 23 '19

Self Care for Developers

Amanda Sopkin ・ Jan 22 '19

50 Things I Wish I'd Known at My First Developer Job (Part 1)

Jacob Herrington (he/him) ・ Aug 19 '19

Looking for Your First Dev Role: Advice for Young Devs by a Young Dev

Tori Crawford ・ May 23 '19

Transitioning Into Your First Junior Developer Role

James Hickey ・ Mar 12 '19

How to Start your Career on DEV

Experience > Degree?

Freelancing 101: How to get started

Kelly Vaughn ・ Dec 26 '18

Do You Need a Computer Science Degree to Be a Developer?

Patrick God ・ Mar 9 '18

Internships

There are Many Paths

Reminder

Article No Longer Available

Article No Longer Available

Spotify Wrap-up: The Best Holiday

Check out how this fashion site shows products

Share your 2019 Halloween Costumes

Top 5 DEV Comments from the Past Week

The Great Debate: Spotify or Apple Music?

Which is better Apple Music or Spotify?

My argument for Spotify:

Other articles that agree with me:

Top 5 DEV Comments from the Past Week

products matter more than technologies

the technology

the right vision for the future?

Blockchain is not only crappy technology but a bad vision for the future | by Kai Stinchcombe | Medium

Kai Stinchcombe ・ Apr 9, 2018 ・ Medium

Say Hello to DEV's Newest Intern!

Kai Stinchcombe ・ Apr 9, 2018 ・
Medium