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Your developer timeline

Nicolás M. Pardo on February 26, 2018

Can you make a small timeline with the stuff you have learned so far? Let's stay with programming languages and frameworks only as things as design...
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Frank Carr

Well, make me feel old...

0 -> BASIC and Fortran
(Pursued a different career direction for about 7 years)
7y -> 808x Assembly and C (you could count this as zero)
10y -> C++
15y -> VB
17y -> HTML
19y -> Java
20y -> Javascript
24y -> VB.NET and C#
28y -> PHP and JQuery
37y -> Angular
38y -> React

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Nicolás M. Pardo

No worries mr senior! We all hope to get there, how old were you when BASIC and Fortran?

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Frank Carr

I was 20 and was in college.

It's hard to imagine today but that class was the first time I had ever been in the same room as an actual computer (a PDP-11 and an Apple II) and not just looking at one through glass walls.

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Ben Halpern

Well there's the part of my developer timeline where I fixed the way tables are rendered in the comments on dev.to after seeing how they were clipped off in some of these comments. And there's the time after this where I finally get to moving the "comment preview" thing to priority because blindly submitting a markdown table is not the best user experience.

Otherwise:

Time Learned
Point 0 HTML + CSS
2 y Very hack/basic PHP
6y Java
11y Ruby and RoR
11y6mo JavaScript/jQuery
13y Angular
14 y React

I feel like things get pretty murky from 13y on where I've learned a lot of different things but haven't really worked with many of them. Basically 11y is when I started learning all sorts of stuff, basically when I became a pro developer for the first time.

There were some major gaps between 0 and 11y but since then code has been my career and a huge part of my life in general.

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Nicolás M. Pardo

Aha! I found the bug (kinda) and thank you for fixing it :D
Your latest languages were exactly mines lol

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Gunnar Gissel

What's the markdown for a table?

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Jason C. McDonald • Edited

I had forgotten a lot of dates, so I had to reconstruct this via StackOverflow.

Bear in mind, HTML/CSS is scattered throughout this timeline. I was using a web builder years before I started coding, although I don't remember when I started coding in it.

0: VBScript [July 2010]
4m: VB.net/Winforms/XAML [Nov 2010]
10m: Python [July 2011]
1y 3m: ActionScript 3.0/Adobe Flash [Nov 2011]
3y 5m: C++ [Jan 2013]
6y 5m: Assembly [Jan 2016]

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Roman Mikhailov

For some reason, I got an impression that you're traveling back in time :) Assembly, C++, ActionScript, Adobe Flash... I'd expect dot NET to be the latest skill not the oldest on a list like that.

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Jason C. McDonald

I'm a reformed .NET developer. I've since repented and gone through rehab for it.

My path has actually taught me the value of dropping abstraction and working closer to the bare metal. Although I still deeply enjoy coding in Python!

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YCM Jason

I started quite young, maybe at around 13?

Year Elapsed time Learned
2008 0 Dreamweaver (shame years)
2009 1y HTML + CSS
2010 2y PHP + MySQL
2011 3y C
2013 5y Javascript
2014 6y (into Uni!) Haskell, Java, C++, AngularJS, NodeJS, more JS, express.js, mongoose, mongodb, git, vim, tmux, socket.io
2015 7y Prolog, more Javascript, Angular 2 + TypeScript, mailgun, Python
2016 8y React + Redux
2017 9y (out of uni!) Vue + Vuex <3, dokku
2018 10y (first job) scss, more JS
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YCM Jason • Edited

It's funny, I have always wanted to deny learning anything from my Uni. But apparently my first year of uni taught me quite a lot. Well but to be fair, AngularJS, NodeJS, Express.js, mongoose, mongodb, vim, tmux and socket.io are all learnt in a self-driven way. The uni doesn't force me to learn them, so I am not so sure how much credit should I give to my UNI.

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Maricris Nonato

Ah yes, Dreamweaver days! But I learned to hate it very quickly too!

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YCM Jason

Haha! I even tried to make a login system with Dreamweaver at that time. No luck.

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Nicolás M. Pardo

Haha first day in uni our professor told us, hell no, we won't be touching DW, we will learn how to code because that's what the worlds need

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Jose Tomas Gonzalez • Edited
Time Learned
Point 0 Java
2 mo Pyhton
1 y/6mo C# .Net
2 y Web2Py + HTML + JQuery + C++
2y/6 mo Ruby and RoR + Android SDK
3 y iOS Swift
3 y/6 mo C + React + Node

Bold ones were self-taught and the others were from college

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Nicolás M. Pardo

How cool! And how unusual, 2 years before your first div

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Jose Tomas Gonzalez • Edited

Yes haha, here computer science starts by teaching logic and simulation in my case using coding as a tool. Then you have engineering stuff like calculus, physics, algebra, mechanics and then only one course of web development.

The aim is to teach software development, so then comes some design courses like computer architecture, software architecture and others.

It's really fun because with the methodology we are taught you can learn in no time pretty much anything. React took about 3 days from zero. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but it is how we are prepared at college.

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Pablo Díaz
Time Learned
Point 0 (2013) Python
6 mo Django, HTML + CSS
1y Java
1y 6 mo jQuery, Javascript
2y Android
2y 6 mo Assembly ARM
3y PHP, SQL, mongo
4y Angular 1, React
5y NodeJS, React Native
6y Vue JS, Angular 5
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J.D. Hillen • Edited

The first 8 years I coded, I was still in High School and College. Like many other developers that were creative coders, I dove head first into the Flash world. While I learned a lot about programming from working in Flash and AS3, I wish I had that time back to focus on the languages I use on a regular basis today.

Time Learned
6 y HTML, CSS, Vanilla JS and JQuery
6 y Flash and ActionScript
1 y HTML, CSS / SCSS, Vanilla JS and JQuery
6 mo Rails
2 yrs PHP and Wordpress
1.5 yrs AngularJS & Angular 2
2 NodeJS, Angular, Express, GIT
6 mo Python

RIP FLASH

PS - Why are the tables so wonky in the comments?

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Nicolás M. Pardo

I'll need a star since I think that thanks to this post DEV notices how poorly the tables displayed but luckily our friend Ben Halpern (Search for his reply and learn from his path) got to fix it!

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tarzan212

Here is mine :

0 -> HTML / CSS (if those count as a language)
6m-> PHP
(Stopped learning code for four years, I was 14 at the time)
4y -> Java
5y -> Python / Android
6y -> C / Assembly
7y -> JEE
8y -> Go

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Raphaël Pinson • Edited

I have a graphical timeline for this at raphink.info/ (source is at github.com/raphink/CV/tree/gh-pages), but I guess it would go something like this. These are the years I started getting acquainted with the language, not necessarily using daily:

y0 -> BASIC (on a pocket calculator)
y2 -> HTML/Javascript/CSS
y3 -> 68x assembly (Mac OS Classic)
y6 -> PHP (personal website)
y7 -> Bash (started contributing to Debian/Ubuntu)
y8 -> Python + C/C++
y9 -> Ruby + Perl (started a job as a sysadmin)
y11 -> Puppet + Augeas
y15 -> JQuery
y18 -> Boostrap
y19 -> Go
y20 -> AngularJS

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Belhassen Chelbi • Edited
Time learned
0 HTML & CSS
4mo Javascript/jQuery
1y React
1y 5mo NodeJs/Express/mongodb

I don't go much to the university so I have time, but anyway I'm still new to back-end with Nodejs/express and MongoDB, and I'm still developing my front-end skills, I think forever xD

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Emil Folino

Cool idea, made me reflect back on all the good times I've had coding. So here goes:

Time Learned
Point 0 HTML and playing around with my dads Turbo Pascal
Long break
New 0, started College CS Ada, HTML, PHP, MySQL, CSS, JavaScript
6 months Java, C++, MatLab
1 y ActionScript 3 (Yikes)
2 y MySQL for real, C
3 y Lisp, Android SDK
4 y Ruby, ROR, Objective-C, Cocoa, Git
5 y jQuery, Bootstrap
8 y python, Java Spring (oh the horror)
9 y LESS
10 y nodejs, bash, mithril, cordova
11 y express, react, mocha, chai

Started work after year 5 and did the consulting thing for awhile. Now I work as a teacher at Blekinge Institue of Technology. Most fun I've had in years.

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Arnaud Morisset

Funny, here is my contribution:

Time Learned
Point 0 Visual Basic & SQL
1 y PHP
2 y Java
3 y C#
4 y Android (Java)
5 y C (POSIX system oriented)
6 y Ruby (and RoR) & JavaScript (and VueJS)
7 y Elixir & Elm
? y Maybe Racket (or another Lisp) ;)

It's not exhaustive, it was my "main" technologies.

From 1 to 5: learned in school

From 6 to now: self-taught

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Dhurim Kelmendi • Edited
Time Learned
0 C++
1 C#, HTML, CSS, JS
2 PHP
3 Laravel, Ruby & RoR, Android SDK
4 .NET, AngularJS

I started learning how to code at the age of 17(0), Finished BSc, currently finishing MSc. As can be seen, I hopped from one language/framework to another pretty often, mostly because of my Uni classes, but also driven by the work requirements.

Many more years to come, many more languages&frameworks to learn

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Rémy 🤖

Oh, fun question! A few major things I can think about

Time (years) Tools
0 BASIC
2 Frontpage
3 Dreamewaver (+ Macromedia suite)
4 HTML/CSS
5 PHP
6 phpBB
7 JavaScript
8 WordPress, Java
9 Prototype.js
10 jQuery, Symfony, C
11 Python, Django
12 Qt, C++
14 Spring, AngularJS
15 PostgreSQL, Go
16 PostGIS
18 VueJS
19 BERNARD

Nice way to put things, I wonder what conclusions I can take from that :)

(And yeah BERNARD is my own thing but whatever I spend a lot of time using it so...)

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Xing Wang

lol. What if you did all the other production coding (C, Java, Javascript, Scala) for years without ever "learning" HTML or CSS? Why does HTML or CSS have to be the starting point of a developer's timeline? HTML isn't even a programming language, may as well start with Typing.

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Simon Cleriot

Very interesting to see all these differents journey into code 🙂

Time Learned
Point 0 (2004) Visual C++ (we only had Windows computers at home 😇 )
1y HTML/CSS, C++/Qt
3y Javascript/jQuery, PHP, Bash (switching to Linux)
3y/6mo MySQL
4y Python/Django
5y Java/Android, C#/iOS (switching to Mac OS, with an Android phone)
7y C (university)
8y Lisp (university)
11y Node.js/Express.js, MongoDB
12y Typescript and Vue.js
14y (2018) Trying to look into R and Go!

By writing this down, I'm realising my learning pace is slowing down as time goes on!

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Martin Himmel • Edited
Year Learned Notes
2004 XHTML / HTML4 The dark years before I knew about CSS
2008 HTML5, CSS/CSS3
2009 JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, MySQL Focused more on PHP, forgot most of JS
2014 JavaScript, Java JS for real this time
2015 Career change - see below
2016 Laravel, Ruby
2017 Vue

From 2000 to February 2015, I was a dental tech. All code prior to this was as a hobby. There were some years sprinkled in there where I didn't touch code at all.

The "JS for real" note in 2014 is when I decided I finally had enough with the dental world and wanted to get into programming. After watching a presentation on Ember at a meetup, I thought I should get back to JS and really learn it this time. I dove into the deep end and recreated about 80% of the original (NES) Dragon Warrior using HTML5 canvas and JS. This was probably my first real/practical step towards the career transition.

I dabbled with Ruby in 2016 mostly to learn the syntax of it. Built a simple command line game with it and haven't done anything with it since.

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Frederik 👨‍💻➡️🌐 Creemers

Not sure about the timings, but the order is correct

0 GML (Game Maker Language, used by YoYoGames Game Maker)
3 PHP, HTML, CSS
3.5 JS, jQuery, CodeIgniter
4 Python
4.5 Java (for uni)
4.5 Google App Engine (webapp, webapp2)
5 AngularJS
6 React, Django
7 React Native

Flask and Go are also somewhere in there, but I don't remember when I learned those.

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Gunnar Gissel

This is pretty approximate...

0y -> HTML
3y -> Java
4y -> Python
5y -> CSS
9y -> Java, but like so I'm good at it
10y -> bash
10y -> Flex/Flash
12y -> Javascript
14 -> Python, but for webapps
16y -> React
18 -> Docker

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Mike

0 -> HTML/CSS
6m -> JavaScript
1-5y -> PHP
6y -> ASP
8y -> C/C++, Java
11y -> Assembly, Reverse Engineering
12y -> Go, Scala, Haskell

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π

HTML -> CSS -> Elixir (fail) -> C -> Ruby -> Javascript now :)