Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.
When you are working on your own as a developer you get exposed to many aspect of the business. You don't really draw border lines. As a web developer you blend in all kind of technology and you consider it all just web development. When you work in a big or established company it is a little different. They don't need full stack developers. They have a person or a group of people that work in just one thing; DBA or Unix for example. If you do this for a while you can become an expert in your field, but lose something in other areas.
The tech world has developed a hollywood-ish image over the years. When you say work in the tech industry, everyone imagine a cool new start-up where hip youngsters dressed in the latest fashion thread, program by day and hit the clubs by night. They play video games at lunch and work on cool projects that disrupt big companies and change the world. Maybe that's how it is when you work at Google, Facebook, or some other company, however that's not what I am experiencing.
Getting traffic on your website is one of the hardest things. You read lots of stories on hacker news on what X website did to get a massive amount of visitors in a short timespan. Almost always each articles use different strategies, so it is hard to pinpoint what makes them successful. I don't get much traffic and I do try to follow these advices. However if you ask me how to drive people away, I can definitely help you with that.
Yes, I think it is fair to say that you can learn javascript in just 30 days. At least it did it for me. Not exactly 30 days but it was close enough, so I rounded it to a nice 30. Javascript can be very confusing to an experienced programmer, because it is very different then other languages. However it is not so hard if it is your first language. Learning the basic should be easy, but when you get into scoping and closure it is something else.
In the start up world articles that talk about failure are very inspiring. It is very hard to admit that you failed and move on. On hackernews, these post almost always make it to the front page. There are a lot of praises in the comments section and people thank the poster for being so courageous. But how useful are those articles?
We live in a fast paced world. Constantly checking email, text message, facebook update, working, driving and what not. We are always busy. There is no time to do anything we love, we are constantly on the run. Sometimes we work 16 to 18 hours a day, but does that mean that we are productive?
Php is by far the most popular web development language. There is a lot of effort put by the programing community to promote Python, ruby on rails, and some newer technologies, but php (LAMP) is just so easy to install and get started. I am a regular php user and it works just fine for my needs. The thing is sometimes I stumble upon some code that make me understand why people hate the language.
The most common response you get when you ask people why they don't spend more time doing what they love or on their side project is: "I don't have time". Other times the answer will be, "I am too busy". It seems to be the norm to accept that there isn't enough time in a day to do what you really want.
I am starting to hear a lot on how getting a degree is no longer relevant. First let me clarify that when I say degree I am referring to a cs or some technical field. As far as I know, you can't google your self into a brain surgeon. But it is possible for a web/software developer, to learn without having to pay $80,000 a year.
I wish i could tell you that ideas don't matter and it is execution that makes a difference. Then I could show you all kind of data to prove my point. But that's not what I am here for. Actually I can't even give you my own example because I cannot speak from experience.
