112 Things I Have Learned about Ruby Programming

I worked through the excellent introductory course to Ruby by Boris Paskhaver on Udemy.com (https://www.udemy.com/learn-to-code-with-ruby-lang). The following is a list of things the course has either taught me or refreshed in my mind, which I hope will be of use to others.

950 Hours: New blog name, JavaScript, NodeJS, etc.

Mission WebDev

Mission DevOps is now Mission WebDev.  Nothing much else in the blog will change, but it represents the next stage in the evolution of my career as a software developer.  Since I updated my online profile to reflect this, I have attracted more interest, which is always a good sign.  I am working my way through a couple of courses online to lay a strong foundation for front-end development, so in this pomodoro cycle I have covered, inter alia, the following topics:

HTML/CSS/JavaScript

• Basics of HTML
• Basics of CSS
• Basics of Bootstrap
• Basics of JavaScript:
• Control Flow
• Functions
• Arrays
• Objects
• Basics of DOM Manipulation
• Basics of jQuery

NodeJS (Mostly theoretical)

• V8 JS Engine
• Node core
• modules, exports, require
• Events and the Event Emitter
• Asynchronous code, libuv, event loop streams, files, etc.

Study Goals

My goal for the next pomodoro cycle is to complete the following courses online:

Learn and Understand NodeJS by Anthony Alicea

It's not an easy course because Alicea goes deep into the Node core and takes the time to explain concepts in exacting detail.  Lots of gestalt moments to be had.

JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts by Anthony Alicea

I'm so impressed by Alicea's treatment of NodeJS so far, that I trust his JavaScript course will give me the deep understanding I'm looking for.

The Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele

A great educational framework.  I've put it on hold until I complete the other two courses, and will probably park it at certain points in order to supplement my knowledge in other areas, but it's the best overall guide to becoming a web dev that I've found so far.

Coding Challenge

In addition to the course, I've set myself the challenge of working my way through last year's Advent of Code in JavaScript.  If I can complete all these challenges, I'll be satisfied with my proficiency in JavaScript and be confident in mastering a web development framework.

React or Vue?

I'm still undecided, but it's probably not something I'll have to address before I hit 1,000 (!!!) hours in my mission to become a fully fledged (and employed) web developer.

See you in a hundred pomodoros.

Focusing on Flexbox

This looks to be the course for me: https://www.udemy.com/css-flexbox/

DevOps Career Path Map, Version 0.1

DevOps Career Path, Version 0.1

This is my first attempt at charting the course towards DevOps.  From what I can tell, DevOps engineers are drawn from the ranks of experienced software developers, or failing that, Computer Science graduates who need minimal training to work competently in a DevOps role.

Unfortunately for me, I meet neither of those requirements, which means either working my way into a software development career or going to university.
I have spent enough years at university; as far as I am concerned, if I need a degree for the job, the job's not worth it.
Ergo, the path to DevOps will be via software development, which raises the question of how to become a successful software developer?

I see broadly two avenues:

1. Working as a junior developer or serving an internship.
2. Getting an auxiliary role, e.g. in technical support or on the customer helpdesk, to get into the company, from which point I can work to be promoted into the development team.

For the latter I am already eminently qualified.

For the former, my daily work can be divided into three areas:

1. Studying programming, i.e. learning to code at a professional level.  A good starting point is Code Academy and Udemy.  Once I have completed the courses through those websites, I think I'll have a much better idea of where to go from there.
2. Online self-promotion.  This includes my blog, using LinkedIn, etc.
3. Schmoozing with professional developers and DevOps engineers.  In Melbourne, there are Meetup groups for DevOps, Python, Ruby, etc.  I have already joined those and will keep an eye out for any others.  At the moment I'm quite enjoying Ruby; although I started on Python, I think Ruby might become my favourite language.  I'll see how I feel in a couple of months.

That's it for now.  Does this seem like a good plan to you?  Any suggestions?