Hi CodeNewbie Community!
It’s a pleasure to meet you. I'm Fernando Doglio: Data Engineering Manager at Accenture. I joined @saron on this most re...
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Hello Fernando,
I'm a newbie in IT and I'm getting started as a backend developer, and I'm talking the self-taught route. I just completed a training in node.js which basically introduced me to the basics. Right now, I don't know what to do next. What courses do you think I need to take to come out as a confident backend developer.
Also, are you open to mentoring people on a more one on one basis? I need a mentor badly now. Thanks
What topics did you cover on the node.js training you just finished? I would say that instead of going for another training, try to duplicate a project. Something basic that you can create on your own. Through that process you'll stumble upon a lot of problems and working through them will help you learn more than just doing another tutorial.
Thanks for your reply. In the training, I covered html, css, bootstrap, javascript, node.js and mongoDB. And your suggestion is well noted.
Thank you.
Hello. Say I want to find and apply for entry level or junior developer jobs (preferably remote), how do I do that? (Back end developer here). What kind of projects should I focus on? And tips for personal improvement. Thanks
Hey Otu, thanks for commenting!
If you're looking to get hired, there are plenty of job portals out there you can use, but I would start with LinkedIn. Make sure you have a good profile there, complete with a good picture, description of what you know how to do and links that showcase your experience.
As for projects you can work on, I would say things like:
Taking just those 2 types of projects, you can give them specific tasks and implement many different variations. Also, what technology are you going to focus on? For back-end (which I'm assuming you mean web back-end) you have some great ones like Node.js, Python, Ruby even PHP. Pick one and focus on that one for the time being. That would be my advice.
Thanks Fernando
You mentioned doing some game development at the start of your dev experience. Do you still occasionally create games or have any games that you created that you're particularly proud of?
Hi Michael, thanks for asking!
Sadly no, I don't create games anymore. I love the idea of working on games and I'd love to work on game development, but I never really developed my skills in that area enough to work for that industry.
The last "game" I worked on was to test an idea I had on how to create a platformer around the concept of those typing games I used to play as a kid to learn how to properly used the keyword. I published my process on Dev.to actually:
dev.to/deleteman123/my-hacktoberfe...
It was a fun week-long project, but I never did anything more than that with it.
Thanks again for asking!
Of course, Fernando!
And while I get that you're not currently focused on building games, this build a game in 7 days project is so awesome! I really like the design of the game and the motivation behind it all — I never had a cool typing game when I was kid, just had something called Ultrakey back in the 90's. It was horrible for kids, lol... no real game in it at all, just words per minute typing. 😱
Anywho, hope it helped your son learn to type!
Can you elaborate on your title? What does it mean to be a Data Engineering Manager? Thanks!
Hi Ben, thanks for asking!
I work for a group that is highly specialized on doing Data Science around Supply Chain use cases and inside that group, I lead the practice of Data Engineering.
We as Data Engineers support the needs of those looking to exploit data, which means that for a new project we try to create the right architecture for the use case, work on the data pipelines to retrieve and transform the data according to the needs of others. That sort of thing.
As a Manager, I'm also leading a few projects that are heavily data-transformation related and I'm involved in several pre-sales opportunities acting as an SME to help develop the best technical proposal for each client.
Did that answer your question? Or were you looking for something else? If you still have more questions please let me know!
Hey Fernando! That's so impressive that you've written three books! What was the biggest lesson you learned when writing your first?
Hi Gracie! Thanks for asking!
I think the biggest lesson I learned after writing my first book was that I don't have to be an expert on a subject to get started with a book.
My first book was about REST API Design for Node.js. At the time I was sure I was an expert on the subject, which led to me believe I could write the book. However, through the process of writing it I realized I had a lot of facts wrong and I ended up learning quite a bit about REST itself before I finished writing the book.
To me, the lesson was that I could write about anything as long as I felt comfortable donig the research about it. Which is why I then wrote the book on Python Optimization. I never worked with python professionally but I felt I could research the topic enough to write about it.
And the same goes for all my other books (I'm about to publish my 8th right now), the key is to remember that authors aren't experts (not always), they're just good at researching and re-arrenging that knowledge to be easily read & understood by others.