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Discussion on: What were your knowledge gaps when you started your career?

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juniordevforlife profile image
Jason F

Debugging large applications was a mind blowing experience. I got my start working at a small company whose flagship product was (at the time) running on .Net Framework 3.??( it was 3 dot something, don't remember the minor version). The interview to get the position was basically a few different tests and interviews to make sure I understood XML, SCSS, JavaScript (ES5), and C#. Once I got started at this position, I was completely blown away by the size of the application. Debugging this thing was intimidating to say the least. I think it would have helped me out to have been exposed to some large applications before starting.

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mikel_brierly profile image
mikel brierly

Yeah dude I hear you there! A file more than 100 lines scared the crap out of me at the beginning. What do you think could be a practical way for newbies to get exposed to large applications at the get-go? I know open source is always a good plan, but it is also massively intimidating to try and break into

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juniordevforlife profile image
Jason F

Mikel, you're totally right about an open source project being intimidating! I do believe there are small open source projects out there geared towards beginners, but they may be hard to find. A year or so ago, I ran a small open source project that was a small Brewery Finder site built with React and Bootstrap. The entire goal of the project was for beginners to be able to get their feet wet with going through the steps of working on a project (clone, debug, make a PR, etc). I'm not aware of a place where projects like these are compiled and shared, but would be cool if that did exist.

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mikel_brierly profile image
mikel brierly

That's awesome!! Thanks for sharing!