Building to be a full stack developer.

[enigmakahn]

So I have been doing front end design for a few years part time, and want to develop my skills further. I found This article and have been thinking of using it as a general guide for my learning, though I'm thinking of switching Ruby for PHP as most of my experience is working in joomla and WordPress. 

 

I'm just wondering what are some other topics would be good to research other than just languages, what soft skills have you found valuable in your careers? Are there any best practices or tricks that have helped you along? Should I do Ruby or python as well before committing to a single language?

[mkb]

Hey enigmakahn.

 

sorry if i am a bit patronise here but i do not know your previous skill set. i cant advice you much on word press as i have never used it but my opinion for what its worth.

Databases and their architecture doing back end will undoubtedly involve having to store data and retrieve it look in to both relational databases (sql,mysql etc..) and non relational databases such as mongo.

I would also look in to queue services as writing calls that deal with requests at that moment is not always optimal for websites queues with service bus or services fabric is good way to hand these tasks over (bit of a azure plug there sorry other platforms do exist  ).

 

I would also look in to api development as its very helpful in making single page applications which tend to be more scalable (but again depends on what you are doing). a true front end app served from a static service\server like NGINX that just interacts with rest api's (stateless that can be duplicated and run behind load balances) takes a lot of work off your actual servers for mundane tasks that can be done by the client.


with the above being said you might want to look in to something like oath and using tokens for authentication.

 

 

and to the point "Should I do Ruby or python as well before committing to a single language" I believe you should do as many languages as possible and never commit to a single language. different languages exists because they are good at different things and you should not limit yourself one project may be done in ruby the next go depending on many factors like server environment , time allowed per request what those requests contain (video rendering vs file passing etc) .

 

 

oo p.s forgive my use of punctuation and spelling bit dyslexic. 

 

 

feel free to reply and keep us updated on your progress

[Dat Guy]

On 23.4.2017 at 2:56 AM, enigmakahn said:

Should I do Ruby or python as well before committing to a single language?

Actually, you should try Perl, C/C++ and Lisp instead,

 

Quote

what soft skills have you found valuable in your careers?

Not blindly taking the first language/editor/platform that comes to your mind. Using the right tool for the right job.

[rizenfrmtheashes]

5 hours ago, Dat Guy said:

Not blindly taking the first language/editor/platform that comes to your mind. Using the right tool for the right job.

This is a huge takeaway.  Each language and platform has it's advantages and disadvantages and learning when to reach for the right tool is huge.  That being said (and possibly extending the metaphor a little too far), everyone has a toolkit that they are comfortable with.  I love learning new languages, platforms, and frameworks on the side, but tend to stick to what I know best when developing for a production environment.  

Personally, I know the Python+Django/Flask pretty well as well as building services in Golang.  I've done stuff in Java as well, but I don't like reaching for that again.  But that's mostly for web services.  

 

I don't have much to say in the category for soft skills, but understanding patterns, anti-patterns, and understanding when you're getting yourself stuck in a rut are huge things to learn (and I still mess up at the last one quite a bit).  This book, 'Release It!', was very useful in guiding how I built services when I was younger.  

[enigmakahn]

Thank you all for your input so far, the biggest reason I picked php as my first language is like I said I've done webdesign in the past designing themes for joomla and WordPress, when I'm looking at other languages, what are Thier strengths? I know Ruby and Ruby on rails are a super popular language/framework, but why would I choose that over php or say python.

 

If it helps my first project I want to tackle is an employee portal at work that uses AD logins to authenticate users.

 

As for Perl and C(ect) is that those languages are more for program and app development, and I'm planning on focusing more on web development.

 

Thanks again everyone for your input!

[LegionOfOne]

On 4/22/2017 at 7:56 PM, enigmakahn said:

So I have been doing front end design for a few years part time, and want to develop my skills further. I found This article and have been thinking of using it as a general guide for my learning, though I'm thinking of switching Ruby for PHP as most of my experience is working in joomla and WordPress. 

 

I'm just wondering what are some other topics would be good to research other than just languages, what soft skills have you found valuable in your careers? Are there any best practices or tricks that have helped you along? Should I do Ruby or python as well before committing to a single language?

I find a large area that most people I meet fall short is that they dedicate themselves to a "single language". That is to mean that if you learn JavaScript you ONLY know JavaScript, and while sure that might be true but the skill set you have learned is transferable to OTHER languages also, such as C#. So if you want to learn ruby, learn ruby. If you want to learn PHP learn PHP. My recommendation if your wanting to get into full stack development... learn how to work with data. Learn EVERYTHING you can about databases. Connecting to a DB is easy, pulling data is not a challenge. If you are savvy with from end then back end is the same song and dance just different logic/utility ( I realize I am passing over a LOT of nuance here lol ). But a full stack developer that can properly structure data is something that a business will want. Learn relational DB structure like MySQL and then learn NoSQL like mongo or the like.

 

Best of luck to you! I hope you have fun with it, full stack development can be a LOT of fun! :-)

-Luke