DEV Community: Edgar A Negron

Why I Decided to Become a Web Developer

Edgar A Negron — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:58:50 +0000

Why I Decided to Become a Web Developer

One year ago today, a friend approached me talking about programming and he changed my life. As of January 21,2019, I had been working two jobs while barely getting by. I had been diagnosed with depression a few months ago and was working through it but I needed and extra push to turn my life around. A few months earlier, I had started improving my Graphic Design skills on Coursera.com, but wasn't entirely engaged. My friend's advice on switching to programming intrigued me enough to start this journey. Before we get into that, I'm going to elaborate on the backstory that led me to this change in careers, my post-Graduation years.

Graduating From College

Graduating from college in 2014 was a great feat for me because I always considered that going to university was going to be challenging for me. I had started studying music because I was passionte about it and I didn't want to have to work at an office job once I graduated. Two years into my music mayor, I decided to switch majors to Audiovisual Communications. I took that decision based on the fact that I sucked as a musician. At the time, I had been making You Tube videos for a somewhat successful channel, so it made sense to me to make the change. I knew nothing of film or TV but was very excited to learn and get up to speed with the film knowledge that I lacked.

Two years later, I was graduating, with a Part-Time, soon to be Full-Time job at a local TV Station and I had never felt more productive and efficient in my life.
However, life as an adult started draining my motivation away until almost 3 years later, I decided to quit my job and move to the West side of Puerto Rico to look for something different.

I was living off my savings for almost half a year (and helping my girlfriend with a Newspaper delivery job that took away our sleep for almost a year) until I got a part-time job at another TV Station as a Master Control Operator. I say it was part-time, but really I was just called to cover sick Operators or whenever one was out for vacation. A few months later, Hurricane Maria happened and I was lucky enough to pull through it unlike many others that had to leave the island. In December of that year, my girlfriend had to quit her job because our car had broken down and we would not be able to continue. She was out of a job, we had no car for the next three months, and I wasn't getting called that much to the station. We barely got to fix our car by spending all our savings. In February, I was hired part-time handing out newspapers at different street lights in a town called Mayaguez. The job was tough, the sun was hot, the rejection was maddening and my work conditions in general sucked. Regardless, I was getting called more each day to the TV Station and things where looking up somewhat.

By the end of the year, I decided to visit the psychiatrist and was diagnosed with depression, I was struggling financially despite having two jobs, a college education and had been learning French and Japanese, and reading all kinds of books ever since I graduated from college. The latter was something I was really proud of but had not pushed me further career-wise. I was really frustrated but with the help of antidepressants and a newfound interest in Graphic Design, I would try to pull through and achieve a better career. Enter January 2019.

My Coding Journey Begins

When I got home on that January morning, I must have written on Google something along the lines of "How to code" and had gone into Codecademy and begun my coding journey. Slowly, but surely I began researching for other sites, started reading on Medium, setting up my environment through other people's guidance. My first coding language was actually Python, since I didn't know yet what direction I wanted to take, I started with whatever stood out at the moment, but a week or two later, I wasn't too sure how I could use Python to make anything so I decided to switch to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. That's when it all clicked, being able to see some actual output on my screen served as the biggest motivation for continuing to study. Throughout my coding journey, I discovered many different resources and diverged from my main path a little bit, by trying other technologies like SQL and Ruby, but always came back to JavaScript because one needs to learn well whichever technologies one chooses. I'm not going to go into too much detail on what I used to learn on this article, but just a few weeks ago I wrote about that so you can read that here:

What I Used to Learn to Code

Edgar A Negron ・ Dec 9 '19

#codenewbie #beginners #career #firstyearincode

January 21, 2020

I have been carefully writing this for a month now, and I'm at a different place than I was last month. I have been working as a Web Developer for the Center of Puerto Rican studies, which is part of The City University of New York. I was lucky that my first job was a remote position. I learn every single day on the job. I've learned how to use Drupal, Sass and Vue.js and try to write better code each day. My journey's just begun, so I'm hoping that my journey lasts long and that I can continue learning new tech and improving on the skills I already know. If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading.

Follow me on the my social media:
Twitter
GitHub

What No One Considers When Dreaming of Working Remotely

Edgar A Negron — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 01:17:32 +0000

It has been a dream of mine to work from home for a while, even before learning that it was a possibility to work this way as a programmer. During that time of dreaming about working remotely, a remote position only seemed to bring ONLY good things. I'm not going to lie, working from home is the absolute best. But there are things one has to consider before working remotely so that you're prepared to face its challenges.

Staying healthy

Before knowing that I would be working from home, I had already decided that I wanted to dedicate more of my free time to exercising. I had gone to the gym in the past year but I didn't make it a regular occurrence, because my previous job wore me out physically. After switching jobs, I started going to the gym as well, but not regularly, and one month and a half later, I gained 15 pounds. This was a definite eye opener for me because I hadn't weighed as much as I did for a long time, so I'm going to make going to the gym a priority from now on.

Organizing your time

One of the benefits of being a remote worker, is that you can save yourself so much time from commuting. I have to admit, in the last couple of years, my commute time wasn't that long, but I know about the struggles of a lengthy commute. Regardless, being able to chop even 30 minutes from commute is a great benefit that will allow you to spend that time doing something you love. However, this might seem simple, but doing it right can actually be difficult if you're not organized.

As a remote worker, your time constraints are lifted to a certain extent, and you can use your time however you wish, even if that means doing the fun stuff before getting any work done. If you're going to maximize your free time, you're going to have to reserve a big chunk of your time to work. During my first month and a half, I've worked anywhere from 2 to 7 hours a day, but I've never really done so in big chunks. I've done half an hour 1 and 2 hour chunks with too many distraction breaks in between.

I would much rather get work done in larger chunks of time, say 4 to 6 hours of work, and then have the rest of my free time for anything else I want to do. It goes without saying that breaks within those chunks of work time are necessary, you just want to take your breaks in whole chunks as well instead of in intermittent moments of distraction.

Don't work too hard

Another of the benefits of remote work is being able to take better care of yourself. This includes the physical, mental and emotional aspects of your health. In order to do this, you must also set aside time to recover from work time and just do something you enjoy. I'm especially having a bit of trouble with this one because I have another part-time job that takes time away from resting. But its necessary to get that rest time on your schedule because it will affect your mental health and your productivity in a big way.

Got out and socialize

Since you're going to be home all day working, it's important to go outside, meet with friends and family and do outdoor activities that can help you stay healthy in more than one way. This probably goes without saying but, working remotely can really take a toll on your mental health if you don't go out and socialize every once in a while, and that's really not what anybody would like to be going through while working from home.

Separate your living space from your work space.

This might be something that some people can handle differently, and I sure thought that it wouldn't be a problem, but I can't stress this enough, separate your work space from the rest of your home. Maintain that designated work area clean and organized so that you can work peacefully and without added pressure, working is stressful enough and any added stress will just affect you in ways that could be avoided.

Remote work is still work

I think that we wrong ourselves in idealizing remote work into perfection. Don't get me wrong, working from home is still a dream, but it doesn't mean it's perfect or that it lacks of its own obstacles. It helps eliminate some of the stressfulness of day to day work life, but you still have work to do and if you can do it effectively and in an orderly fashion, you will gain all of the benefits that come with working from home.

Width: 100% VS. width: 100vw

Edgar A Negron — Fri, 13 Dec 2019 00:08:48 +0000

Recently, I’ve noticed that using 100vw adds extra space to the right of the viewport and additionally a scrollbar to visit that extra space. It doesn’t happen with 100% so that’s what I’m currently using.

Why does this happen? I’d like to know what the under the hood implementations of the vw and vh tags are and if they really are better for responsive design.

What I Used to Learn to Code

Edgar A Negron — Mon, 09 Dec 2019 01:25:41 +0000

Note: This article contains some promotional links for different code learning resources.

Finding the Best Resources

The Basics

During the first months of my coding journey, I was always looking for new resources that could help me speed up my learning process. If you've just gotten into coding, chances are you either started coding with Codecademy or Free Code Camp, both excellent resources that I still visit from time to time.

If you follow the #100DaysOfCode hashtag, chances are you've seen people using Free Code Camp and getting their certificates. Free Code Camp is an excellent source for getting started because it covers so much from Web Development to Cryptography with a variety of languages, like HTML, CSS, Javascript and Python, but for some people, who need the whole audiovisual experience to stay engaged, other resources are required to complement FCC. In the case of Codecademy, you get a 7-day Free Trial, but you have to pay a monthly fee for Codecademy PRO, which can take you a bit further than FCC, because of its colorful interface, but its not as accessible and feels a bit lacking when the time comes to make projects with what you've learned.

The More Engaging Places to Learn

I only managed to try Treehouse's 7-day Free Trial but of all the places I've learned about Web Development, this was the one that I found the most engaging and visually compelling. It helps you give a very good structure to your coding journey. I didn't really learn using Treehouse because I wasn't able to afford it, but if I would have had the money, I'm sure that I would have sped up my learning.

The next resource I would like to recommend, also has its ups and downs, but it complies with my Audiovisual needs and has helped me stay engaged. PLUS it can be so much more affordable than any of the previous options. This has been one of my greatest aids in the last couple of months, and that would be Udemy. Udemy has as many courses as there are people teaching them. You can find courses on basically anything, even non-programming related topics. What I like the most about Udemy, is that, you can learn about very specific topics and generally, the lecturers go in depth and have you make projects that will help you improve your skills.

Some of the Udemy courses that have helped me really get a strong grip on my Web Developer skills are:

One final thing about Udemy, the courses can be pretty expensive but they have discounts all the time, I've been able to purchase most of my courses there for less than $20 bucks, and you will have content for months to come.

Honorable Mentions

I cannot conclude this article without mentioning two of the resources from which I have learned the most as well.
The first one is a series of courses by Michael Hartl called Learn Enough to be Dangerous. You can learn about Technical Sophistication which is probably one of the best skills in a programmers toolkit, about Text Editors, Git, The Command Line, HTML, CSS, JavaScript Ruby and Ruby on Rails. This series of tutorials used to be accesible for Free, but they've added some additional content and videos that make this an even better resource to have. So if you have the money, I would highly suggest this series of tutorials. Michael Hartl and co. literally teach you all of the basics that you don't get from other places in the most concise and simple way possible.

Finally, I would like to mention Coursera. If you're a student, and don't have much income, you can apply for Financial Aid and take a variety of courses that form part of a Specialization in a specific topic. In my case, I've taken courses on Web Development technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Bootstrap, like other Programming technologies and many more topics. If you aren't a student, you would have to pay monthly for each course, and in the end for a certificate that showcases your achievements.

Conclusion

I found it hard to get just the right resources that would help me be an effective learner. However, even though these methods worked for me, they might not work for you in the same way. So its up to each self-taught programmer to find the resources that are right for you.

What I learned during my 1st month as a Junior Web Developer

Edgar A Negron — Mon, 02 Dec 2019 01:56:01 +0000

What I learned from my first month as a Junior Web Developer

After 9 months of learning how to code, I got my first chance at a Junior Web Developer position which was fairly easier than what I had anticipated. While studying Web Development technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript, I had planned that I would start trying to apply for work after 1 year of studying. As the deadline got closer, I started to consider that I would have to push my deadline further a few months, because I just didn't feel ready and I felt like I had so much to learn before I could start applying. The truth is, most job listings asked for so many Web technologies that weren't even within the Front-End Dev spectrum, that I started to think that I would need to get into Back-End before actually getting a chance at applying for a job.

Fast-forward 9 months into my studies, and I contacted an old high school friend about something completely unrelated to programming, but mentioned I was learning how to code and that I had lost touch with most people because of it. The next day, she asked me if I was interested in a part-time, remote Jr. Web Developer position. I obviously accepted. I have to admit, I was pretty lucky, but at that point, I had been doing Colt Steele's Web Developer Bootcamp course on Udemy and I had had a definitive boost in confidence. So I felt like I could do any job even if I was confronted with something I had never tried before, which was obviously what happened.

The Dreadful Drupal 7

While going through the onboarding process, I was being told about all of the different projects that I could get assigned to in the future, and was obviously really excited to prove myself. My first assignment however, was a huge challenge and, one month into the job, it's something that I'm still struggling with. My first two assignments where two different webpage designs. The website was built in Drupal 7 and my supervisor wanted me to get acquainted with it first because eventually we're going to have to migrate it into Drupal 8.

I was told that the other developers weren't too fond of Drupal and my supervisor herself dreaded it. I saw it as an opportunity to stand out, but not without its fair share of obstacles. On my first day of work, I probably sat for 30 minutes staring at the computer screen not knowing where to get started. After 30 minutes of fetal position crying, I decided to ask my supervisor for some guidance, I was really honest with her, and I asked her for some resources to help me be on my way. She pointed me to the Drupal Theming Docs, but that was a dead end, so I asked again, and tried different things until I started searching for tutorials myself and going through things and figuring them out. My supervisor gave me lots of advice and threw me some hints here and there, but I tried to be prudent with asking for help because I know she has her own work to do.

Eureka!

On the second week of work, I was still studying and watching tutorials, and I have to admit that the pressure got real really fast. I had always assumed that because I was studying, I had space to fail because it was normal and I would not let Imposter Syndrome get the best of me. However, on that first week of work, I felt it. I started feeling like I wasn't really good enough at this and that I there would always be some kind of unreachable knowledge that I wouldn't ever get to grasp. But I pushed on, and eventually, I made a few experiments here and there, and finally got some work out. It was at that moment that I felt redeemed. I would be alright after all.

The next couple of weeks flowed somewhat in the same manner, as I was designing the webpage I was assigned, I came across obstacles that I had to think through and fix by trying things out and analyzing what was going on.

Conclusion: What I learned from this experience

To conclude my little anecdote, I'm going to list a few of the things that I have learned throughout my first month as a Web Dev.

This is going to sound cliché, but syntax isn't as important as having the analytical skills to take a problem, break it into smaller bits and going through it little by little, it really helps you organize what you're doing and helps you get less anxious when tackling issues and tasks.
Using the console is really important because you want to know how the Web Environment is reacting differently from your local server.
Git is such and important skill to have, and knowing how to use it as part of a team instead of just your typical git add, git commit and git push will help you go a long way.
Know what questions to ask and be considerate of other people's time. Also, make sure you thank someone after they help you, and at the end of the week, let them know how much it helped you get through the week.
Sometimes, even if you feel like you're not doing anything at all, if you have any ideas of how you can solve them, but you're not sure, make sure you give those ideas to be expanded on, it might not work, but you'll probably figure out something that will.
Breaks are important, sleep is important, family is important. Make sure that you're keeping yourself healthy because that's going to help you perform better.
If you've been tackling a bug or any problems with your code for hours on end, just take a break, or sleep on it. I've probably already lost count of how many times I've spent a long time trying to fix something, left it until the next day, and figured it out in seconds.
Remember to enjoy what you're doing, if you're not enjoying it, you're either missing something or there's something else for you out there.