DEV Community: Dominic Ross

The Lonely Coder, Part 3 - Staying on the path:

Dominic Ross — Fri, 02 Jun 2023 15:58:18 +0000

"They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair, and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all rotting, all dead. A fell light is in them."
― Frodo in The Two Towers, "The Passage of the Marshes"

During Frodo and Sam's trek through Middle Earth to return the Ring of Power to Mordor, they were led through the Dead Marshes by Gollum, who said he knew the way. During their passage, brilliantly portrayed in the Peter Jackson Films, Frodo gets distracted by lights in the marshes and falls in, the dead seemingly coming to life from the power of the ring.

Our trek on the path to Self-Taught Developer is much the same - although maybe with fewer Nazgul and scary ponds full of dead people - as Frodo and Sam's. When following the self-taught path, it can be hard to know which map to follow. If you look at online services such as Reddit, Twitter, Dev.to, and even Hashnode, they are full of tweets/articles such as "Try Bun, the new Javascript framework", or "React just got updated, and it's made javascript obsolete", and "Why learning to code in WebAssembly is the only way forward for Front end" (Disclaimer - made up, but plausible post titles (no, I didn't use AI)). Learning to code as a Lonely Coder can be confusing. Do you go straight for React, or use Angular, Svelte, Vue etc? Should you learn PHP because it's "making a comeback", or should you stick to the 'boring' basics of HTML, CSS and JS?

Whilst this article isn't about where you should go (Start with the basics (HTML, CSS, JS) and get them down first before moving on to a framework is what I'm doing, for the record), it is to warn you not to stray from the path and keep your sights set on Mordor, er... I mean Junior {whatever} Developer, or risk being lost in a sea of overwhelming possibilities.

Being Distracted from Studying:

One of the biggest problems with studying as a Lonely Coder is the sheer amount of things that can catch your eye. In my case, I'm learning Web Development. If you look at Roadmap.sh and look at the first couple of blocks, it can seem a little overwhelming (although to be fair, there is a new "Beginner Version" which is less frightening). The point is, there is so much information out there, it can be difficult to know what to cover. As mentioned above, I'm starting with the basics and will get more in-depth as I go, following the Scrimba Front End Developer Career Path. But there are plenty of other good resources, such as FreeCodeCamp, The Odin Project, Code Academy etc. Whichever you choose, try not to be distracted by other "shinnies" out there. And don't listen to the nonsense that "AI will take your job, so don't bother".

Being Distracted from Work:

Unless you're very lucky, chances are you going to still be working whilst learning on the side in the hopes of progressing down the Lonely Coder Path. This will inevitably mean that you're going to be distracted by your 'new' job, whilst still at your current job. When I started my journey, I was a telephone engineer, spending 90% of my working day out in all weathers trying to keep people connected to the internet. When I wasn't working in someone's home, or with a colleague, I would listen to podcasts and news about Web Development. On my lunch break, I would sit in my van and read some of my coding books, or review notes I'd made. Several months after I'd started my journey, I moved jobs and was in an office all day, sitting at a computer, and taking frequent calls. In between calls, and on quiet late and weekend shifts, I would read through MDN docs and make notes. There is a big danger when studying at home to let it spill into your work.

Emmanuel Denier - Unsplash

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying you have to lead a Bruce Wayne style of double life - mild-mannered bank clerk by day, dark and brooding learner of code by night, finding vile coding bugs and bringing them to justice - no. But you need to remember which takes priority and when: When you're at work, you work. When you're on your break, or at home, you learn.

Keeping the coding gears turning:

Leading a double life, however, can get tricky, and sometimes your two worlds will collide. You'll be in the middle of serving a customer when you'll suddenly know exactly what line the bug in your code was on: "Yes, Mrs Jones, that will be £9.36 and by Jobs I think I know why that bloody variable wouldn't update last night!" (Believe it or not, this has happened to me more than once). In moments like this, it's important to keep your cool. If you do not face to-face with your customer/colleague or manager, then do a little dance, pump a fist or silently slap your palm to your forehead, but don't make a noise, or you'll scare the idea away. Just like seeing a squirrel jump out onto the path in front of you, stay still, admire the beauty and make a note of it. Write down your solution as soon as possible whether it's on a scrap piece of paper, the screen you're on or on your hand just note it down, because if you think you can come back to it, you're sorely mistaken.

I was once up a pole fixing a phone line, standing 14m above the ground when the solution to a bug I'd been debugging at lunch suddenly came to me. I cheered, I fist pumped but I didn't write it down, because "Of course that was the answer!". When I was next sitting in front of my code editor with my bug in front of me, could I find it? Like heck, I could! It took me another 2 days to find the bug, and whilst it wasn't exactly what I'd thought of up the pole, it was close, so I could have saved myself 2 days, had I just written it down somewhere. The next time that happened, I wrote it in the back of my job notebook, which was always in my pocket at work.

Conclusion:

Keep your study and work separate. By all means, read coding posts/books/articles on your lunch break, but don't ignore work in place of learning, as your work won't be too happy, and you may find you have more studying time than you wanted but no way of paying the bills. If a solution worms its way to the surface of your brain whilst at work, amaze at the power of your brain and make a note of the solution to come back and look at it later when you're learning.

Stay on the Self-Taught path of the Lonely Coder, as I'll have another post about one of the biggest mountains to climb - Impostor Syndrome.

The Lonely coder part 2 - "It takes a Community to make a Developer"

Dominic Ross — Fri, 03 Mar 2023 11:59:11 +0000

If you read my first part (first of all, thank you), you would have seen I went through the different paths a learner can take to become a coder. I am taking the lonely path, going self-taught to become a web developer. I'll explain my process, the pitfalls I've come across and any tips I've got to help beat it to reach the end of the path: Being a Junior Web Developer (ok, maybe not the end of the path, but certainly the first goal). Please bare in mind that I'm still on my path, so this may well evolve as I continue and updates will be added with new tips and tricks I've learnt. Also note, this is aimed at web development because that's what I'm doing. The resources will be Web Development based, but the concepts will apply to any programmer/coder. Final note, there are no affiliate links, just my recommendations I've come across on my path (so far).

Why do you need motivation?

“Wanting something is not enough. You must hunger for it. Your motivation must be absolutely compelling in order to overcome the obstacles that will invariably come your way.” —Les Brown

Seeing as we live in a society where bills need to be paid and potatoes are not legal tender, we do have to work, and spending 40+ hours a week doing it, you want to make sure you enjoy what you're doing.

Believe me, when I say, there's nothing worse than having a job you hate. I don't mean that you dislike going to work, I mean genuinely hate it to the point it makes you physically and mentally unwell. I've had one of those jobs and I did everything I could to get out of it. The "problem" is that I'm now in a job I don't mind. I don't love it, but it's certainly better than other jobs I've had. It's not what I want to do, but I'm not in a rush to leave. What I do want to do is become a Junior Web Developer. Because I'm nearly 40 and have bills to pay, I can't go back to uni and get a degree (as mentioned in my previous post) which is why I took the Lonely Path and went down the Self-taught route. The problem is, this is a tough path to take for many reasons, so you need the motivation to get you through it. Without motivation, you can quickly lose interest and forget why you want to become a developer. Motivation is key in getting to the result of becoming a coder/developer or anything because there's no point going through all the trouble and hurdles of learning on your own if you don't care about the work. When you're stuck against that problem and have been tearing out your hair and feel like giving up, the motivation will remind you why you're putting yourself through this, and spur you on. You can think of motivation as a fire torch you use to light your way along the Lonely Path.

Where does the motivation come from?

Many factors go into motivation and what motivates you. I love technology, and remember fondly the early days of the Internet and want to be a part of its future. For others, it could be the need/want to change jobs, the enjoyment of creating things, wanting to make the world a little better or being inducted into it by family or friends. The important thing is that the motivation is strong. A weak motivation won't get you through those dark moments I mentioned earlier.

How to keep the motivation up:

In those dark moments, it will be hard to keep going. That's why a Lonely Coder needs to join a community to help keep them accountable and on track. In those dark moments, where everything seems lost, just a single comment will be the ray of light that propels you from the pit of despair to the peak of elation, where you spot your error and fix the bug. Without that help, it could take you hours, days or months to figure out the bug, by which time, your motivation has gone. If motivation is your torch and source of light, then the community is your guide or sherpa, leading you along the path. They could either be walking beside you, or turn up just when you're about to cross a treacherous bridge and show you the easier path.

Finding and joining a community is one of the most important tools of any developer, but especially the Lonely Coder, as this is your link to the thing you're trying to enter. Without a community, it's next to impossible to achieve your goal and become a developer. Not only will that community help you solve those seemingly impossible bugs by pointing out your re-initialising your variable to 0 each loop, so, of course, nothing is adding up (based on a true story), but they will also point you in the right direction when you ask for help. A really good community will help you find the mistake yourself by nudging you in the right direction.

There's a saying that goes "It takes a village to make a baby", and we can steal that and say "It takes a community to make a developer". A community of like-minded people on the same path as you will not only help you along the way, but it will also help you pay it back by helping out people having similar problems to you. This also helps solidify your understanding of a topic, and "take off the blinkers" a little, allowing you to see the problem from other points of view. What's more, a community will inspire you by seeing other people achieve their goals, further fuelling the motivation, or making you think about certain problems and how you would achieve them. Finally, making connections in the community will help you build a network, which is an essential part of getting a job as a developer and growing your knowledge.

Where to find your community:

"So why is this the Lonely Coder if you're advocating finding a community?" would be a very good question at this point, and a fair one to ask. The reason I still title this 'The Lonely Coder' is because unlike the other two paths mentioned in my previous post is because the other two paths come with communities "built-in". When you go to university, you're learning with a massive class of other people on the same subject. Although that class will diminish as your progress through the years, you will have a core community of people you will learn and develop alongside. In the Bootcamp setting, this also comes with a community at its centre, as your cohort of learners will mostly be starting from the same place and you'll all learn the same thing each week.

In the Self-Taught path, you don't have a community built in, you have to find one. So, the logical question is, where do you find a community? I asked several Social Media outlets for the hivemind to give me community suggestions and found they can be classified into two groups: Passive and active.

Passive Groups:

passive groups are the kind of thing where you can post questions and get answers, but it's quite asynchronous. In this category, we can find the kind of groups that are social media aggregators like Reddit or HackerNoon. They're the old-school types of community like the forums that were so popular 20 years ago. You wait for a post to come in, and then decide if you want to interact.

Active Groups:

The active groups are more like your modern Social Media of Twitter, Discord and Mastodon. Here, it's more like a conversation with someone or a group of people and is a lot more interactive than a forum post.

It's a personal preference as to which you opt for. I like a mix of both. Below is a list of resources where you can find/make a community:

Discord: The current trend is for everyone to have a discord server. Sadly, I'm not a big fan of discord, but I do follow a couple of good servers, and I just use them as and when I need to.
- Kevin Powell's Discord - Kevin Powell is well known YouTuber and self-described CSS evangelist. I love his videos because he doesn't cut them to make himself look perfect, he leaves in the bits where he's made a mistake which he then corrects later, and that makes him very human and relatable to me. He's also a teacher at Scrimba and has a great course on CSS.
- The Coder Career Podcast community - This discord server is run by Cameron Blackwood and has a podcast of the same name. It's a very good Discord, with lovely people, so worth a look if you like the podcast.
- Devcord - Devcord is one of the servers I found through searching which is a mix of coding disciplines but very helpful when questions are asked.
- Scrimba Discord - I would be remiss if I didn't tout the Discord I mostly use. Although the Discord is for students of the Scrimba Front End Developer Career Path (which I'm following), it's a great example of what a developer community should be. It's very active and full of helpful tutors and learners all trying to help each other and having lots of community engagement.
- Reddit Recommendations - The following are recommendations I was given by Reddit, and I haven't tried them, so can't vouch for them:
Other social media - I use a select few discord servers and use it to supplement other social media, such as:
- Mastodon - Since the Elon Musk takeover of Twitter, and all the things he's done with it, many people have clipped their wings and put on a trunk to join Mastodon. Mastodon is a federated social network with lots of servers which are dedicated to certain topics. I use Hachyderm.io which is for techies who also like open source. I highly recommend you find a Mastodon server you like with people you enjoy. Many people from "The bird site" have moved over, and you can follow them no matter which server you sign up to. Even better, if you find a better server later on, you can move to another server without having to make a new account and transfer all your followers.
- Reddit - I'm a big fan of Reddit. It has a subreddit (think old-school noticeboard) for pretty much everything from Aardvak's to Zebra and everything in between. It's more of a noticeboard sort of Social Network, but there are some great communities there. I suggest r/technology for general technology posts and news, r/programming for general programming help and r/webdev for web development. If you're into other technologies or languages, search Reddit, I can almost guarantee you there'll be a community for it.
More passive communities - As for the passive communities, there are lots of good sites to find and build your community. Here are the ones I suggest personally (because I've tried them).
- Dev.to - A great community where you can read articles on almost any coding topic. Although it's not a community like the previous suggestions, it does allow you to follow specific authors and read all their posts as well as comment and chat with other people in the comments. The site themselves have a good presence on Social Media (both Twitter and Mastodon) and often have hackathons and events.
- daily.dev again, not strictly speaking a community, but an excellent tool for aspiring and seasoned Developers. This is a news aggregator, where you set your preferences and it will then show you a feed of relevant news stories from all over the web. They have browser extensions for Chromium browsers and Firefox as well as apps for iOS and Android, and it will replace the start page for every new tab you open. I find it very interesting to keep up with common trends (which at the moment seem to be all about AI and ChatGPT).
- Hashnode If you're reading this, you're on it. But otherwise, if you are an aspiring developer like me, then you may well blog, and Hashnode is an excellent place to blog about tech. Much like Dev.to, it's a blog site that is all about technology. I highly recommend having a blog here and crossposting to dev.to.

Dangers to your motivation:

If I've given the impression that motivation is a rock-solid foundation which will shield you from all the (let's be honest) rubbish that will be thrown at you, I've oversimplified things. Motivation is like fire: when it's young and flickering, you need to nurture it and feed it the right way to prevent the motor from being snuffed out. Being part of a community will certainly help you nourish that fledgling motivation into a roaring fire that will see you all through the nights of coding.

Particular dangers to young motivation are:

Burnout - It's very easy to go from 0 to 100 when you're at the early stages of your path. Your motivation is high, you can't stop reading, thinking or dreaming about coding. There's a tendency to over-commit and take too much on at once. This will quickly lead to burnout, and you'll end up figuratively dunking your fire with a bucket of cold water. I experienced this when I first started to try to learn Web Development about 10 years ago. I went so quickly to reach the goal, that I burnt out. I tried to run a sprint when it was a marathon. Take your time. Yes, there will be external pressures that will make you want to finish as quickly as possible, but you mustn't let it be so all-consuming that it leads you to burnout.
Comparison - One of the biggest dangers of communities is seeing all the other members doing "better" than you. Remember, everyone on the Lonely Path is walking parallel to everyone else, but on their own and going at their speed. Some will appear to overtake you in days and be travelling along the path so fast, you'd think they were in a rocket. In some instances, this may be true, but you don't know about their journey. Don't try and compare yourself to others. If it takes you 2 years, it takes you two years. This again takes you back to your fragile motivation; you need to feed it properly and help it keep burning, just as it helps you along the dark path.
Bad advice - Another issue with coding communities is that when you ask one question, you'll get 10 different answers, half of which work, some that don't, and some that are completely off the mark. I recently listened to the Code Newbie podcast with Tanya Reilly a Senior Principal Engineer at Squarespace, and they had a great piece of advice: Don't jump in at the deep end:

"Anything with 'Just' in it, 'just' get involved in open source. If you want to get involved in Open Source, absolutely, but that is not the first step for learning code" - Tanya Reilly, Code Newbie Podcast, Season 23 Episode 2 (approx 36 minutes)

What Tanya means by this is that you may get people saying "Just google it" "Just ask ChatGPT the question" or "Just copy this code". Whilst all this is somewhat good advice, you will learn to filter out the wheat from the chaff. Some advice will lead you in the right direction, some will lead you down a rabbit hole so deep you'll be having tea with the Mad Hatter, and some advice will be just plain bad.

Conclusion:

Some of the key tools in your knapsack for your trip along the Lonely Coder path are essential, none more so than a torch (Motivation) and a guide (Community). Without motivation to light the way, you'll never know where you're going, and without the community to help you out of those tough spots and help keep your motivation burning, you'll be one of the thousands of lost coders on the path, walking in circles and shouting into the void. Get good motivation and find a good community to travel with.

The Lonely Coder - The three paths to a coding career

Dominic Ross — Thu, 26 Jan 2023 14:18:18 +0000

If you've followed me for a while, you'll know that I'm trying to learn Web Development using the self-taught route. I'm using the Scrimba Front End Developer Career Path. In this post, I will talk about the three different ways of getting into a tech career, their advantages and disadvantages and the different aspects they offer. This will also be the start of a new series of blog posts going down the Self-taught route and what pitfalls to avoid and how to make the most of it.

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.

John D. Rockefeller

The three paths to success:

In the tech industry, there are three paths to getting a job: The Traditional Path, the Modern Path and the Lonely Path. I will go into detail about all three routes in a minute, but first, let's look at why there are three routes in the first place.

Originally, there was always (pretty much) only ever one route into the tech industry: University degrees. When computers first emerged from the Second World War, they were built mechanically and took up an entire room (or even a building). Memory was measured in bytes, and "code" was entered by highly skilled operators. You'd have to wait hours for the computer to process your code, and when you got the results back, you'd have to fix any errors you'd made and start all over again. At the time, the main way into the tech industry was with an Electrical Engineers Degree or something related (maybe if you'd used computers in the armed forces, you may get in without the degree), but on the whole, it was one way in. There are stories of people who managed to teach themselves coding (the early version of coding, where you had to read and write machine code and lay out your "code" in punch cards or switches). Much later, in the 70s, it was possible to get into tech without a degree, but you'd have to make a name for yourself, and it was still accepted that you needed a degree in CS or Electrical engineering. Again, some outliers managed to change the way we compute today by just being complete nerds and (essentially) building a computer from scratch (I'm thinking of Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computers). It's only since the explosion of the internet and in particular, Fibre Internet, when speeds grew fast enough to be able to stream video and hold meetings online that the second age of Computer learning was launched: boot camps. Bootcamps allowed people to learn a lot very fast and become ready for certain tech careers in as little as 3 months. This isn't without its drawbacks, of course, which we'll talk about later, but it did mean that computing was accessible to more people. One could argue that the lonely route was always there, but it's only been widely accepted in the last five years or so. When I was first learning to transition to tech, it was a degree (or some other certification) or nothing. Now, many more companies are accepting people without the necessary degree/certification. It's a slow change, but an important one.

Jan Huber Unsplash

Now we'll go through the three paths that you can use to get to have a tech career. Quick note, I've called it three paths, because some paths are very similar/identical to the one they've been put together with, but I will highlight any differences should they come up.

The Traditional Path - University/College degree:

Pros:

Good foundational knowledge
lots of technologies covered
expert tutoring and help are available

Cons:

Expensive (in many countries)
long (3-4 years)
rarely gives you "office knowledge"
Often require high school grades

If you've ever applied for a job in IT (whether that be programming, app development or anything similar) you'll most likely have seen something similar to this:

Wanted, Junior developer:
2 years experience in front-end skills (HTML, XHTML, CSS, SCSS, JS, Tailwind, Ajax, React, Node, Ruby, Python, C++ and Github all required)
2:1 in Computer Science with Masters's Degree in advanced physics and temporal engineering
expected to work weekends, evenings and nights with a minimum of 10 minutes' notice
Pilots' licence to fly the CEO in the helicopter
MUST HAVE OWN COFFEE

Ok, so I may have gone a little overboard, but not by too much (I genuinely saw a job posting asking for masters for a junior role!). The point is, most (if not all) job postings will request that you have a degree in Computer Science (or a related field). The reason for this is simple: It's a safe bet for the employer that you will have a set amount of computing knowledge. My son has just started his second semester at University, studying Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. His first semester was learning Java, and after a couple of months, he showed me some of the designs he was making and they were very impressive. This semester, he'll be learning HTML and CSS as well as a bit of Python. He'll probably learn more in three months than I have in the last ten years! And it's not (entirely) because I'm slow or lacking, but because Universities like to give you a solid base of knowledge on all sorts of technologies so that when it comes time for you to choose one, you don't have to stay with one, but can choose from a wide variety. This is what employers like because they know you will have been taught the basics of computing, including algorithm trees, and advanced Maths that can help you. It's a safe bet, and that's all a prospective employer wants. Someone who will fit in quickly with little training (on the technical side, anyway). If you're ever stuck, you can either ask fellow students for help. or go to your lecturer and they will point you in the right direction. There will often be study groups you can join and meet with like-minded people and learn together and clear blockages together, helping you learn other team-building skills crucial for a Tech Job.

But university isn't for everyone. The main thing that puts people off (especially young people) is the sheer cost of university education. In the UK, you're looking at a mind-boggling figure like £37000 ($45687) for the four years of the course alone! That doesn't include housing and general living expenses. And that's a fairly low figure (the one my son is paying), and only if you're a UK resident. If you're from the EU or further afield, it's a lot more (over twice the price). One of the other major barriers is time. My son is studying full-time, and it's still going to take him 4 years. If you're a parent, you may not be able to afford to take 3-4 years off to study full-time. You probably have Rent/Mortgage to pay, childcare issues, food etc. So you could opt to do it part-time, but then you're stretching it out to 6 years, and the prospect of paying a lot more as well as having two jobs: your job that pays the bills, and the job of studying. I tried it but had to give up because of other work commitments. And that's because I could only see a path without a degree. One final pain point I will highlight is that many students will come out of a degree and think they're ready to hit the ground running. Unfortunately, many university courses don't teach you the one skill you're expected to have; Office skills. I'm not talking about the Office Suite from Microsoft, I mean working in an office day to day. Dealing with other people in a work environment, going to meetings and being relied upon to produce work. My son wouldn't know what to do. Fortunately for him, he's chosen to do a year in industry between his second and third years. This allows students to get the skills they would never have learnt at University.

Steve JohnsonUnsplash

The Modern path - Internships or Bootcamps:

I've lumped these two together because they are very similar as an entry path to a tech job, although they do have some obvious differences that I'll go into. First, the boot camp, because that's what I know best.

The Boot camp:

Pros:

low cost (can be free)
low entry requirements
part time available
quicker than a degree

Cons:

A firehose of information
can be too fast, leaving you with not enough time to comprehend the subject matter
less regulated in terms of accountability
companies often oversell

Bootcamps have become popular in the last 10 years or so and saw a great influx in popularity during the recent pandemic when people were on furlough or laid off for so long. The idea of a boot camp is that you start at 0 and end up close to 100 within anything from 3 months to a year. It's a great opportunity if you know you can take a year out of work to learn a new skill and get a new job. You'll either meet in person, in a class-like environment or online through Teams or Zoom. You'll be taught by one or two people who have done the relevant job for a while and used it in practice and can tell you all the little anecdotes you don't get from a book. You'll often be put in a group to do a team project to present at the end of the course and be expected to take an idea of a product from design to finished MVP (Minimum Viable Product). What's more, the company will have a recruiting consultant on staff who will try and get companies to agree to take you on at the end of your boot camp so that you can "walk into" your next job.

Bootcamps are not for the faint of heart, however. The best description I could give a boot camp is a "Fire hose of information". The boot camp I took part in was in DevOps, where we were taught about Agile, Docker, Ansible, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Git, Grafana, Terraform and AWS all in roughly 64 hours. Don't worry if none of these technologies sounds familiar to you, they're used on the Backend of development, suffice it to say that 64 hours to learn 9 completely separate technologies is laughable. Of course, I did some learning on my own in the middle of this, but those 64 hours gave me an idea of what DevOps is, not the workable skills to be a DevOps Engineer. The course I was on was very good, and the teachers were excellent and went as slowly as time allowed them, but suffice it to say, I will require much more time to get a better grasp on these concepts. And that Can be the problem with boot camps. Not all boot camps are made the same. Some will be longer, with more than just a week to learn a technology, but the downside will be the price. If the company can take their time to teach you these concepts, it's not because they're easy, but because you're paying them for it (in contrast, my course was free (to me)). Another issue with boot camps is the providers: You have to be careful who you go with. Do your research. If they're government-backed, all the better (mine was, which is why it was free). But be warned: There be pirates in them there waters!

Raimond Klavins Unsplash

The explosion in the popularity of Bootcamps has, sadly, caused a proliferation of companies with less than honourable intentions towards your wallets and many people have been caught out by this. Research the company, read reviews (preferably unbiased reviews) and don't believe all the hype these companies will use to sell you on joining their boot camp. If they say you'll be job ready in 64 hours guaranteed, don't believe them. If they say "90% of their students get a job when they finish" look into the data: Is it a job in tech related to the course they just took, or is it any job? I'm not trying to dump on Bootcamps, or the one I took, but do your research and remember: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

The Intern:

I won't say much about this one, as I don't have any experience with it. Suffice it to say that it will often be similar to a boot camp in that you will be expected to learn a lot in a very small amount of time. You will have the backup to help with this too, and you will be working (usually) in the office, but maybe working on siloed code and only pushing your changes once it's been gone over by a senior. The difference with an internship is that you may not have to pay. But you'll be working usually for free, so again, if you have bills to pay, this isn't the ideal situation. Some companies may pay you, but it will be a minimum wage at best. If you're lucky, you may be offered a job at the end of the term, but not always. It depends on the company. Again, the same advice goes for Internships: Do your research and if it's too good to be true, it is. Also, make sure you're not just an unpaid office hand. Make sure you get your hand on the keyboard (or at the very least get to look over someone's shoulder).

Josh Hild Unsplash

The Lonely Path - going self-taught:

Pros:

Costs nothing
can be done in your own time
you can choose your path

Cons:

lonely
no mentoring available
easy to get lost in "tutorial hell"

After my Bootcamp last year, where I realised I was nowhere near ready to be a DevOps Engineer, I looked into what these skills could lead me to, and I was led to Full Stack Development. I remembered my time learning HTML and CSS fondly and decided to give it another go. When finding that my original course was no more, I went looking for a new one and found Scrimba. Scrimba is what I wish I'd had nearly 10 years ago. Rather than watch a video of an instructor showing you what the code is and what it does, with Scrimba you get to watch the instructor, but they then let you take control of the screen, and you can edit the code live in the browser and see your results instantly. If you get stuck, you can continue playing the code editor and the instructor will show you their solution. It's like having a personal tutor in your browser. The advantage of "Going it Alone" is that, if you choose to, you don't have to pay anything to learn to code. You can watch as many videos on YouTube as your internet connection can cope with. You could find books to read and follow (my recommendation for Front End is Learning Web Design 5th Edition: A beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Web Graphics (Not affiliated)), but the problem with both of those is that you don't get any feedback or help if you get stuck. You could follow the Odin Project which has an excellent Full Stack program and a great community to offer support and advice. If you're willing, however, you can pay a little for a course like Scrimba (I say a little, it is when compared to a boot camp or Uni) and get all the benefits of 'live' tutoring, excellent and friendly community as well as lots of additional challenges throughout the year and a weekly podcast full of inspirational people and useful information.

But the Lonely Path is just that: lonely. You don't get the daily/weekly class sessions with classmates, you don't meet people with similar interests and you can't go to anyone specific when you're stuck on a problem. Sure, you can ask for help on Stack Overflow, but in my experience, you'll often get shouted down by more senior devs for asking stupid questions. On your own, you can feel like it's you against the world and very isolating when trying to face down a seemingly insurmountable task. Starting on your own, you may not know where to start, which can also feel overwhelming. Simply put, you need to find support, both at home (an understanding partner and cooperative children to give you time to learn) and online (to ask those "stupid questions" when you're stuck and help motivate you when you're feeling down). The worst thing about going it alone is the easy trap of falling into tutorial hell.

Conclusion:

I've tried all three paths (or at least, sampled all three) and I'm glad that there is a range of paths to get to one final goal. Each has its merits and pitfalls, and whilst some will be ideal for some and not for others, that's the beauty of having all the paths available. The most important thing is to reach the end because there's nothing worse than setting off down a path and losing your way and getting stuck in Tutorial hell, or deciding to get give up and go back the way you came when your goal could be just around the next corner.

In my next post, I will talk about some of the ways to stay motivated on the Lonely path and how to chart your way past the quagmires of despair.

A Most Unexpected Journey - How my "first year of code" went:

Dominic Ross — Wed, 21 Dec 2022 14:24:27 +0000

If you can’t fly, then run,
if you can’t run, then walk,
if you can’t walk, then crawl,
but by all means, keep moving.

Martin Luther King Jr.

The end of 2022 will see me reach my first full year of coding (sort of). I count this as my first full year because previously, I wasn't focused, it was just "something to do". If you'd told me on January 1st that I'd know what a Docker container with Ansible file was and that I'd soon shift my focus from DevOps to Front end Development, I would have scoffed. But to understand how I got here, I need to look back at where I started and where I've been to fully understand.

A map is no use if you're heading off in the wrong direction:

When I started this year, I was about halfway through my DevOps Bootcamp with Purple Beard (which you can read about here) and believed - or rather, hoped - that by summer I would be a junior DevOps engineer with a company working from home and loving life. At the time, I was still a Telephone Engineer for a large national company but was struggling to walk due to complications from a previous disability. My manager at the time decided that if I couldn't walk, I couldn't work, so I was off sick at home.

I eventually decided to cut my losses and went to work for the local hospital as bank staff, helping the temporary staffing team.

By the time I'd finished my DevOps course with Purple Beard, I'd realised that having the DevOps skills alone wasn't enough to get a job as a DevOps engineer (something that hadn't been made clear at the beginning). I needed a new direction in which to head so that I could make use of my newly found skills. I had previously studied web development but lost my bottle when it came to JavaScript, thinking I wouldn't be able to understand it. I decided to revisit the idea, as I'd always found Web Development fascinating. I went looking for my old course, only to find it had gone, disappeared in my absence. I started looking for other resources and found the Scrimba Front End Developer Career Path, which is a prescribed course from basics of HTML, through CSS, on to basic Javascript and eventually one of the most popular frameworks out there: React. By the end of the course, you should have enough knowledge to get a junior role as a Front End Developer. This has been proven week in and week out with students sharing their success in getting new jobs on the Discord channel and the highly successful Scrimba Podcast.

New heading entered. Engage!:

I started my Developer Career Path in March this year, not long after my Bootcamp ended. There was a new enthusiasm for an old path that needed refreshing and I made quick moves forward.

What made Scrimba different was the way the lessons are conducted. Previously, I was watching videos of anything between 5 to 30 minutes long where the teacher talked about a subject. The problem was, there was no motivation to do the code that the teacher was showing you, so it quickly became death by video.
On Scrimba, the entire lesson is taught in what is called a Scrim, which is an interactive playground made in Imba and similar in function to what you get on CodePen where you can type HTML, CSS and Javascript and it will run in the browser window. It even has a mini browser so you can instantly see the effect your change has on the code. The other impressive feature of this is that the entire window is also a video of the teacher's scrim, so you will see them enter code in real-time and you can pause, mess with the code and then press play and it will go back to the original code the teacher put in and continue teaching you new concepts. For me, this was - quite literally - a game changer, as I now had the motivation (and ease of use) of typing the code in the browser window and seeing the effect and if I got stuck, I could just hit play, all my changes would disappear (but are saved if you go back to the moment you paused the scrim) and the teacher would show you their solution to the puzzle.

The entire course is built to slowly build up your knowledge and skills and let you express them with projects at the end of each module to practice and embed your new skills. To date, I have 5 projects I've built from scratch, with nothing but a Figma design to go from. These include A hometown homepage, a unit converter, a scoreboard, a password generator and an Instagram clone based on classic art. The other projects I've created have all been created while following along with the teacher.

Warning, Obstacles ahead:

“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.”
– Roger Crawford

If I were to speak to my past self and tell him what had happened this year, he would be shocked at the turmoil we'd faced: changed jobs twice, off work for multiple months because of layoffs or sickness, moving home, finding out our Bootcamp wasn't quite what we had hopped... He'd be forgiven for feeling defeated. But this year has given me a lot to reflect on and (believe it or not) be thankful for.

I'm now working in IT as a support assistant (back in the IT industry after 19 years), a good third of the way through my Scrimba path with a good understanding of JavaScript (It's not as scary as I once thought) and a path heading in the right direction. It's not all roses, sure. But it's going the right way, slowly but surely.

I hope to use this blog more in the new year to help log my altered journey, and I hope you'll follow along. I wish you a very happy holiday (whichever you celebrate) and a prosperous new year. If you ever want to connect, come follow me on Mastodon.

DevOps plus 23: My first few weeks on a Skills Bootcamp

Dominic Ross — Fri, 31 Dec 2021 17:05:41 +0000

If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know I’ve started a Skills Bootcamp to learn DevOps. I’m now on day 23 and in the middle of my Christmas break. I hope you all had good holidays and enjoyed whichever festivities you celebrate.

As it’s New Year's Eve, it’s a time for reflection on the past solar cycle and also a time to look forward and plan for the next. If your plan is to change jobs, then a Skills Bootcamp could be for you (so long as you meet the criteria). I’ve already explained what they are, how to get on one and what they do. Now I’m going to share with you what it’s like to actually be on one. Remember, this is specific to a digital skills BootCamp, but will most likely have similarities regardless of the skill you’re learning. In this post, I’ll share with you what you should do before, during and after your first few lessons.

Set-Up:

Failure to prepare is preparing for failure.
— Benjamin Franklin

A good set-up is a key to enjoying and learning from a class, especially if it’s LFH (learning from home). If you spend the first half-hour of each lecture getting yourself set up, you’ll miss what your teacher is saying. So prepare for the class in advance. I had weeks to set up and slowly built up a good set-up with recommendations from the teachers. Here are some key set-up points:

ensure everything you need is at hand and charged. There’s nothing worse than having to spend 10 minutes running around looking for a spare pair of headphones because your Bluetooth ones died just as the teacher says “Above all, remember this!”. Have a pen and paper/notebook/text file ready to take notes (more on that below).
make sure that your working environment is well lit, comfortable and quiet: Make sure everyone knows you’re going to be busy for the next ‘X’ hours and not to disturb you unless it’s an emergency. Make sure you have a comfy chair (try to avoid the bed if possible) for several hours and that your screens are set up as per DSE standards. Also, make sure you’re warm/cool enough for the next 2 + hours.
Go to the toilet/bathroom: trust me, you don’t want to be counting down the seconds till the teacher agrees on a break. They may miss it, or your mother in law will go in for a shower just as you’re about to run in. Don’t rely on there being a break. The teachers will always try, but they’re on the clock, and if they need to, they may cut the break to allow to fit all the teaching in.
Eat before class: If your class is in the evening after work, they tend to start soon after work is finished. Mine starts at 1730. As I’m home anyway, I eat a light dinner before class. You don’t want to be the person whose microphone catches the growling stomach demanding to be fed. At the same time, don’t eat a full-blown 3-course meal, or you’ll fall into what I call the Pudding Hour: the traditional time for a siesta and you’ll fall asleep headfirst on the keyboard typing gibberish to the chat.
BE ON TIME: In my class, the teachers will do a roll call. Not the kind in school, but they’ll make sure that everyone is online when they should be ( it’s also part of the criteria for being fully funded by the government). If you’re not online without telling them, they may want to know where you’ve been or why you’re late. Of course, life happens; if you know you’re going to be late (stuck at work, in traffic, putting the kids to bed, lost in time & space) then let one of the teachers know ahead of time if possible. Just because it’s an online class doesn’t mean you can arrive late.

The best way is to be ready and signed in to your Teams or Zoom call up to five minutes ahead of the lesson starting. You may find other students have also arrived and can start talking to them.

During Class:

Once the hellos and introductions are out of the way, the teachers will start discussing this weeks’ topic. There is almost always a slide that will have a summary of what you’ll learn. Listen attentively and make notes as you go. Make sure you interact with the teachers. Don’t leave them hanging when they ask a question. Remember, they may be as nervous as you at first and no one likes an awkward silence. You can either answer in the chat, or unmute you're microphone and answer. If you’re confident enough, turn your camera on and let people see you. It’s easier to connect with a face than a name.

A note on Notes:

I quickly learnt in my first few classes not to write everything down on the screen or in PowerPoint. Unless you’re proficient at shorthand (which I’m not), then it’s a waste of time. You’ll spend too long having half-finished sentences because the teacher has moved on to the next slide that the notes will become next to useless. Plus (on my course, at least) you’ll get the slide deck later to go through anyway, so you’re only going to be duplicating efforts. What the notes are useful for is to note down what is not on the slides. Make notes on the stories the teacher tells, or examples they give to help clarify a topic. Make the title of the note something related to the slide (like the main title, slide number or topic) and note the story or explanation. This will be useful later.

Don’t be scared to interrupt the teacher to ask a question. You can either use the “raise hand” option in teams, type it in the chat (although this could go unnoticed if they don’t monitor it), or better yet, unmute yourself and ask (depending on your teachers’ preference). I know it sounds trite, but there really is no such thing as a stupid question. If you’re coming to this course from well outside the field, chances are you’re going to be flooded with new information and taking it all in is going to be hard. If you really don’t feel comfortable in those methods, send an email or DM to the teacher, and they’ll get back to you asap.

After class:

Once the class is finished, the most important thing you can do is relax. Pat yourself on the back! LFH is not easy, especially when you don’t know the subject matter, so congratulate yourself (and others) on finishing the lesson.

Oftentimes, one or both of the teachers will stay on for a few minutes to answer any questions. This is the time to ask if you weren’t comfortable asking during the session. Some teachers may even take you into a side room to help with a technical issue, or agree on a time to do so. Some people stay and chat about their team project, but most people leave as soon as they can. In fairness, it’s late, you’re tired and maybe hungry.

Writing up your notes:

As soon as you can, review the slides from the last class and write your own notes. If your course is part-time (like mine), you only have four-and-a-bit hours of class a week on a topic. In the tech world (and especially DevOps) that’s just not enough. You need to dig deeper than what you’ve gleaned from those four hours to understand the material. There will be links and off-shoots that weren’t covered in class that you should read to learn the concepts better. Personally, I do this by going back over the slide deck and writing my own notes. You can use handwritten or typed and organised how you want. I prefer to use Notion to organise my notes as it allows me to include code and markdown. I wrote a bit about how I did that in a previous post.
Make sure you read any links in full, as these will most likely give you a better understanding of what your teacher was trying to convey. Ask them if they recommend any books or websites in particular to read. As it was Christmas last week, and my fiance didn’t have a clue what to get me, I gave her a list of books on DevOps that the teachers suggested. I had one to open on Christmas day and one waiting to be released in the coming weeks. I intend on reading these to help with my journey through DevOps.

Conclusion:

If your first few weeks are anything like mine, they’re going to be a whirlwind of information, people and new things to do. Take it easy and take your time. Use these tips to try and make it easier and remember: the teachers are there to help you learn. use them, and you’ll enjoy the experience a lot more.

Let the games begin: My DevOps Journey starts today!

Dominic Ross — Wed, 08 Dec 2021 16:20:28 +0000

Today is the day!

Today, I will go from knowing almost nothing about DevOps to... well, I hope something.

I've been waiting for this day for nearly 2 months, and have slowly been getting nervous as the day has approached. I would be working a regular job at the moment, but my health has taken another turn, so I've been at home almost as long as I've been waiting for the course.

2 months is a long time to be at home doing nothing. I've kept myself busy with little house chores I can physically do, but otherwise, my days have been very empty.

Or at least they would have if I hadn't set myself a goal.

In this post, I will share with you the lessons I've learnt from self-study and how I have adapted them to allow me to enter my virtual classroom today excited and ready to learn about DevOps.

Potential pitfalls of learning from home:

This will not be the first time I try to learn an IT role and enter the field. This will actually be the fourth attempt at learning an IT skill. I have previously attempted to learn to become a Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), become a web developer, and become an Android App developer from scratch. All three have failed for varying reasons, but the common reasons are Discipline, Support and set goals.

In all of my previous attempts, I have been very enthusiastic for the first couple of months of learning a new skill. My learning in the first few months has been excellent, as I've devoured the content to try and learn everything as quickly as possible.
Eventually, the enthusiasm has worn off, and I've maybe sat down to learn once or twice a week. Eventually, it's been months since I looked at it, and can barely remember what I learned. There's just been no Discipline.

On those occasions, it's not unfair to say that my support has been minimal at best. Because I was learning alone, I had no one interested enough to bounce ideas off of, and no one to go and see to ask questions. Yes, I had access to resources online like StackOverflow and Reddit, but that's not the same as sitting down with someone who explains it to you till you 'get it'. There simply was no Support.

Finally, as I said above, I had no discipline in my learning, it was all or nothing. This not only leads to burnout, but also to losing interest quite quickly. There were no Set Goals that would help me see progress.

Keeping the mind ticking over:

"If you wait to be offered an opportunity to learn, you will be
waiting a long time."
Peter Hutton | TEDxMelbourne

When I first heard about the possibility of doing a Skills Bootcamp (read about that in my previous blog post in this series) I knew I was going to need to work hard and dedicate myself as much as I could to this program. Part of the requirements for getting on the course is that you agree to attend at least 90% of the sessions. This can be a big ask for someone trying to hold down a full-time job, or deal with a young family at the same time. Of course, exceptions can be made, all Purple Beard ask is that you keep your learning assistant advised.
Still, I knew that going in without "warming up" wouldn't be best conducive to learning or retention.
On many of the courses I looked at before choosing one, an ability to code was a strong recommendation (although not a requirement. Plenty of people have started these courses with very little knowledge and come out the other end fully capable). As I wasn't a stranger to coding (as mentioned above), I decided it was time to blow out the cobwebs and get my coding gears in workable shape before my course.

I settled on learning Python, as it had often been recommended as a beginner-friendly language to learn. I started with apps like Mimo, SoloLearn and others, but found their "courses" rather skimpy on the details. I decided it was time to hit the books.

"Dummies" Leads the way:

"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”
― Benjamin Franklin.

I have used the "For Dummies" series of books for many things in the past, from Buddhism and meditation to Coding and cooking. I have always found their writing style and structure to be engaging and educational, so when it came to choosing a book to learn Python, there was no hesitancy to head straight to their books.

The first one I bought was useless, as it was 15 years out of date and was talking about the old version of Python. I managed to find a 7-in-1 book on Python from the "Dummies" series for the same price as the out of date one online, so promptly got it.

The book that arrived teaches all the basics of Python in the first three mini-books and then allows you to expand and use that knowledge to learn a little about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, hardware interaction and finally robotics.

I have so far finished the first three mini-books, and therefore learnt the basics of Python (more than enough for my DevOps course, my learning assistant tells me), but I would highly recommend this book to any new learners of Python. It's by no means perfect, I've found plenty of mistakes and typos as I read it, but will certainly give you a great understanding of Python and how it's used in various popular fields.

Book and language chosen, how did I learn from home?

Now I had my medium and subject chosen, I want to tell you what I did to prepare for my course.

Being off work for so long and with no concrete date of when (or if) I would be going back, it would have been too easy to sit and watch Netflix all day or play on my Playstation till my manager let me go back to work (in fact, that's exactly what I'd done on previous occasions off sick from work). But with a goal in mind this time, I knew I couldn't 'slack off' for 6 weeks and then go in all guns blazing to 10-15 hours of study per week without feeling it.

I, therefore, decided to use my Python learning as a warm-up for the course itself. I split each chapter into their sections and set myself a rota of doing a certain amount each day. I used the Pomodoro method (where you work for 25 minutes, rest for 5, work 25, rest 5, work 25, rest 5, work 25, rest 15) and during my work session, I would read my book and write the notes.

View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Dominic Ross (@youngdad33)

Tools for notes:

In my previous learning journey, I had used an app called Quiver on my MacBook, but seeing as I was now on a Chromebook, that was no longer a possibility. I did some research and found a suitable alternative in Notion, and started writing my notes. Each chapter was a new page in my Notion workbook, and it slowly grew to have over a dozen pages split into separate topics.

The benefit of using Notion (and other similar programmes) is that you can mix Markdown Text with Code snippets and images. I typically wrote my code in the code snippet feature, then paste a screenshot of the outcome from VS Code.

Getting to know the IDE:

Before I bought the Python All In One For Dummies book, I was using the text editor Atom, created by the good people at Github. I had previously used and liked working with it (although I'm fairly sure I wasn't using it to its full potential).

When I started reading the book, however, they encouraged you to use VS Code (aka code) from Microsoft. I'll admit I was a little reluctant to do so, as I did like using Atom, but since both were available for Linux (the only way I could get it to run on our Chromebook), and I didn't have time to try and translate what they were doing in the book to what I needed to do on Atom, I opted to at least try VS Code.

To my delight, I found that using Code was very much like using Atom and didn't appear to have anything missing. I was able to follow along with the instructions in the book (despite a few technical difficulties they didn't provide for as they wrote the book for windows and mac users) and got the same results they did. As it turns out, when we had our Onboarding session with Purple Beard, it turns out they teach using VS Code too, so that was a nice bonus.

Good working environment:

All of the above is great, but if you're exhausted and restless after one session, you won't be able to give your full attention to the rest of the course.
Set yourself up for success with a good working environment all set up and ready to go for when your course starts.

I've had nearly 2 months to prepare, and as well as the above steps, I've made sure that, when the time comes, I would be comfortable and ready to learn when my class started.

Sitting on the sofa or bed with books dotted around you and your laptop balanced on your knee is not ideal. You need a dedicated space set up to learn from.

I started out in a comfy chair with my legs up and a table to my side, and slowly added elements to help make the area more conducive to learning. I started with a book stand, to keep my book within view and readable without bending in all sorts of funny positions, I got a light to shine directly down on me to make sure I wasn't straining my eyes, and eventually went the whole 9 yards and got a desk and chair to stop me from getting a painful back and neck and to allow me to use a second screen.

View this post on Instagram
A post shared by Dominic Ross (@youngdad33)

Conclusion:

Learning from home can be tricky, and has the potential to leave you burnt out or disinterested altogether. With Discipline, Support, setting yourself easy to accomplish goals and setting up a suitable working environment is crucial to successful studying and enjoying your topic.

The same can be true of working on a Bootcamp, but going from nothing to BootCamp is difficult and could lead to burnout. If you're going to use a BootCamp to learn to code (or write or exercise or cook) be sure to build up those "muscles" so that you don't set yourself up to fail, but instead set yourself up for success.

DevOps-Minus 1 Day - What is a Skills Bootcamp?

Dominic Ross — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 21:07:27 +0000

Have you ever wanted to do a Skills Bootcamp, but thought it would be too expensive or too demanding? I have. In a little over 24 hours, I will be starting my DevOps Journey with Purple Beard Training Ltd and be (virtually) meeting my camp-mates. I’m very excited, but also a little nervous because I don’t know what to expect. That’s why I’ve decided to write this blog and a series as an introduction to any future BootCamp takers.

I learnt about the skills BootCamp scheme funded by the Government's’ National Skills Fund through my partner sending me a link to an Open University course called DevNet Skills.

I’d never heard of DevOps before, but I was aware of terms they were using such as Agile, and CCNA (I had previously tried to complete the CCNA some years previous). As I read through the website, I became more and more interested as the description of the course was very much on my level. I applied and waited to hear back.

And waited… I applied for the course around mid-August of 2021. I didn’t hear anything for a long time. By late September, I took to Twitter to chat with their online presence there. They gave me an email address to try. Eventually, someone from their social media team reached out on Direct Message to help.

// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1441285880614821894-747'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1441285880614821894&theme=dark" }

I received an email from the team dealing with this course on September 29th. They had to postpone the course because they had so many applications (around 1000 for 20 places), they couldn’t sift through all of them. I eventually heard back that I hadn’t been chosen.

At first, I was despondent. Especially as the day I received the email, I’d had a bad day at work and was in a lot of pain. But I didn’t give up. I decided to go back further and look at the whole driving force behind it: The National Skills Fund.

What is the National Skills Fund?:

The National Skills Fund will help adults to train and gain the valuable skills they need to improve their job prospects.

gov.uk Website

The National Skills Fund (NSF) is a campaign by the UK government to help adults to learn new skills and retrain and find a job that will, inevitably, help the UK economy grow. The NSF is aimed at “anyone over 19 in work, self-employed, furloughed, recently left work or looking to return to work”. So, pretty much anyone? Well, there are some additional criteria for certain courses. For example, to be eligible for my course, you had to be all of the above and live in the Midlands or East Anglia.

I was amazed to find that The Open University was not the only institution to offer a course. There were over a hundred courses dotted about the country with big universities and independent providers. And not just in coding, but in Construction, Engineering and Manufacturing, Green skills and rail. This blog will only cover one digital skill BootCamp, however.

It took me several days, but I eventually found one with a company called Purple Beard Training Ltd. I did some research to see what they were like and I liked the sound of the company and the course they had available. They had two for my area, Data Science and DevOps. Because I’d taken an interest in DevOps, I opted for that one.

// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-1467845159408840714-163'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=1467845159408840714&theme=dark" }

I filled in the form and waited to hear back. Thankfully, the wait was much shorter than with the Open University, and I had a call with one of their advisors on one of my days off. We had a little chat and she agreed I sounded ideal for the course. She sent me the details via email and within the week I was confirmed on the course.

Tomorrow, that course starts. I’m really looking forward to meeting some of my campmates and the instructors. I’ve already had a pre-course induction, where we went over some of the basics and had a chance to ask questions about tech and skills we needed

I have since been signed up to their Office365 server and our Teams classroom is set up and waiting.

I will be writing more posts about the first weeks of the course and hope that it helps someone else who may want to take up a skills BootCamp. Once my training is finished, I hope to get a job as a DevOps engineer, and at that point, my blog will evolve to be my digital presence online.

Next time, I'll tell you what I did to prepare for my time on a skills bootcamp.

I hope you found this article useful. If so, please give me a like and a follow, don't hesitate to share it on Twitter or Facebook and/or drop me a comment on what you'd like to know about skills bootcamps or what I should write about next.

DevOps-Minus 2 days and counting - Going from zero to DevOps Hero with a Skills Bootcamp paid for by the UK government:

Dominic Ross — Mon, 06 Dec 2021 19:02:16 +0000

Do you have your dream job? Finding a job you enjoy is not easy. Sometimes, it can seem like you've found your dream job, one that will keep you engaged and interested for many years. Sometimes, you can tell you're not going to get much out of it.

Hi, I'm Dominic, but my significant other calls me DoDo. I'm looking at becoming a DevOps DoDo, and this will be my log of that transformation.

I am doing this course as part of the UK Governments' National Skills Fund, where eligible people in the UK can take part in a free or heavily subsidised Skills Bootcamp with the aim to retrain and help the recovering economy.

I left school after my A-Levels and went straight to work. My brother, an IT manager in London, managed to secure me a three-month contract in IT Support where my role was very much equivalent to a work experience role: Changing the backup tapes (yes, tapes!), directing basic IT Support calls, replacing ink toners and helping my brother with testing the new programme he had created for the company on as many of the most popular and current phones we could purchase. Eventually, life decided to throw some obstacles at me and I was unable to pursue this field and had to take any job I could. I have been trying to re-enter the IT field ever since, but always come across the Experience Paradox: You need the experience to get the job, but you need the job to get the experience.

I tried several times, years later, when I was medically retired from the police force due to an Auto-Immune disease that meant I couldn't walk. I tried to complete the Cisco Certified Network Associate's exam, then went on to HTML/CSS to be a web developer and finally tried my hand at Android App programming. None of them succeeded, however, due to discipline, support and health.

This time, I have managed to secure a place on a Purple Beard Training course that will teach me the basic skills of DevOps with the aim of getting a job in that field at the end of the course. My training will start on Wednesday Evening and last several hours. This will be the same routine from now till March: Two nights a week, 3 hours a night of fast-paced learning with the exception of Christmas and New Years' week. Once I have finished, I hope to complete (and pass) an exam to get a certificate, although that is optional.

This blog will be my log and experience as I couldn't find much - if any - discussion of the process and the experience whilst doing my research.

Tomorrow, I will be writing on more details about the National Skills Fund and how I applied to join the course and what the requirements are, as well as what I have been doing to prepare.

I hope you find this blog interesting and informative, please don't hesitate to add any questions or comments below.

Happy Coding!