Forem: vladimirp.dev

What does "job ready" mean really?

vladimirp.dev — Thu, 29 Aug 2019 19:27:20 +0000

Couple of months ago, after I finally landed my first dev job, I did a Q&A / AMA here, mostly about the process of getting a job, career change, etc.

Most of the questions were really good and could spark some interesting debate.
Like this one for example:

"How did you know you were job ready?"

The more I think about it, and the more time I spend working in this industry, the more I realize how relative this term is, almost to the point of starting to lose its meaning.

Here's what I mean by that.
Of course, we all know that technically it means readiness in terms of knowing the skill required for the job.
But what I've noticed, after several interviews, talking to a couple HR people, and working for a while, that knowing the skill required is only a part of the equation, and in some cases, it’s not even the biggest part.

The other, almost equally important part, is the candidate’s personality, and how well they can fit in with other people in the workplace. Just think about this - people need to spend (at least) 8 hours a day every day with this person, so how many do you think are ready for that if the person is negative, toxic, or simply a douche? Or someone they don’t have any common grounds with? Even if they are extremely good at what they do?

Another point I want to bring up is that sometimes, especially with smaller companies, the plans, the requirements, and the circumstances around growth and hiring are constantly changing and evolving. They may get new clients during the process, or lose some, or they simply may adjust their plans based on the people they are interviewing.

For example, when I was being interviewed for my current job, the initial idea was to hire two people for the position - one experienced and one beginner that would be trained (me). What ended up happening was they only hired me. Now I’m not saying I was so awesome as a beginner they didn’t even need another person - I’m just saying the situation and plans can change.

The moral of the story is this - "job ready", while technically not meaningless, is extremely relative and different from job to job, and from company to company. So my advice would be - every time you’re not sure whether you should or shouldn’t apply - just apply! Not only it can be a learning experience, but maybe they’ll end up liking you so much they’ll hire you even if you don’t completely fit the requirements.

Best of luck with job searching, I wish you a productive and joyful career!

My 5 favorite resources for learning JavaScript

vladimirp.dev — Mon, 12 Aug 2019 06:03:40 +0000

A couple of times I was asked on my Instagram about resources for learning, and since I already wrote a little about CSS and some cool tools, I decided to dedicate this post to the JavaScript resources I was (or still am) using.

Since I first started learning a couple of years ago, some of these might be considered outdated, or using some tools or methods that have since been updated; I still included them, since it's not only about the code, but teaching some very important principles that can be applied to most programming languages and tools.

So here's my 5 favorite resources for learning JavaScript:
(the fact there's 5 is purely coincidental :) )

1. JavaScript & JQuery

by Jon Duckett
javascriptbook.com

Even though it might be considered "old", it is still one of the best laid-out, organized and illustrated books I've ever studied from.

It is beautifully designed, with graphs, illustrations and visual aids that help immensely with understanding the point.
Perfect for visual learners, as well as a reference book for when you need to revisit the fundamentals!

One thing worth noting is, if you are getting this book, make sure to get the latest edition, since the early ones had some errors in them.

2. Practical JavaScript

by Gordon Zhu
watchandcode.com

A great free online course that does a great job of explaining some of the most important concepts, such as functions, objects and conditional logic.

It stresses the importance of planning your app's features in advance (instead of jumping straight into coding), and grouping your code into objects - for the sake of better readability and organization, as well as slowly leading us into the world of OOP.

3. YouTube Tutorials

by Traversy Media
youtube.com/techguyweb

My most favorite YouTube tutorials are made by Brad Traversy, AKA Traversy Media, but of course, there are many others.

Brad has a huge repository of high-quality videos, with everything a Front-end developer might need, as well as a couple of other topics.

4. #JavaScript30

by Wes Bos
javascript30.com

A very fun and a bit more advanced collection of 30 exercises and cool mini-projects, each focusing on a different JS feature.

Wes Bos has become somewhat of a guru in the front-end development world. His teaching style is interesting, but also a bit faster than what I was used to, and also somewhat more advanced, so I would definitely recommend learning the basics of JavaScript before jumping into this one.

5. You Don't Know JavaScript

by Kyle Simpson
github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

A 6-book series, each diving into a core concept of JavaScript and descritibng it in-depth, helping you to better understand how JS works "under the hood".

Just like with the previous one, I recommend previous basic JS knowledge.

As allways, feel free to send me questions or suggestions for more posts.
Any question regarding JS or other tools, I'll try to answer the best I can.

Have a great week!

Let's talk about the Epic Games Store features [project update]

vladimirp.dev — Mon, 22 Jul 2019 17:00:11 +0000

Hey guys! 👋

As always, I have a video, but this one is a bit longer and totally unprepared and spontaneous. In it, I'm going deep into the store features, choosing the ones I would like to include in my project (on the spot), and explaining in detail why and how I'm choosing them.

But if you're not into that, here's a TLDR (TLDW?):

I divided the features by priority / importance into these yummy categories:

The Cake

Search - through Game titles, Devs / Publishers, Usernames, etc. (instead of just game titles)
Filters / Tags (Combinable) - Should be able to choose (or search) tags, as well as click, to list the games that have that tag
Shopping Cart - with multiple items
Wishlist
Login / sign-up - with 2-3 required fields max

The Frosting

Autocomplete for Search - as you type

The Cherry

Dev / Publisher info / contact
Sorting - by name, price, year?
Ratings

The Sprinkles

Comments / Reviews ?
Showing games owned and/or ratings or reviews on users' profiles

I don't wanna overextend myself and bit off more than I can chew, so I think this is plenty!

Considering the fact I'm basically going to be learning full stack (MERN most likely) for this, I think I have my hands more than full.

Until next time!

P.S. I'm still not sure how to name this project? I'm thinking maybe something like "The Legendary Games Store"? Send me suggestions :)

I want to redo the Epic Games store as a school project, feedback welcome

vladimirp.dev — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 21:37:52 +0000

This post is mostly a transcript of this YouTube video of mine, in case you prefer video content. Plus there’s a pretty cool intro there :)

Background

At the age of 30, I enrolled in an e-commerce program (actually something like a 3-year bachelor degree) at an IT school in my country, because I wanted to get a job in that industry, and while I did pass all my exams, I still didn’t technically graduate, because I didn’t do the final graduation project assignment… thingy…

There’s several reasons for that, one of which is lack of ideas for projects that could keep me interested, as well as the motivation to do it at all, since I managed to find a job, even without it.

But I think I may have thought of something finally.

Now before I go deeper into this, let me first make it clear that this just a beginner-level school project, I still consider myself a beginner, and it’s basically a plain old e-commerce project, so don’t expect anything cool and groundbreaking. The only thing about it that could potentially be interesting is the theme.

And that theme is, as you likely figured out - the Epic Games Store.

What is The Epic Games Store?

For those of you who are not familiar with it, the Epic Games Store is a pretty controversial online PC video games store that has been getting a lot of attention on the internet - and not the good kind - mainly because of their questionable business practices, but also, partly because of the fact that their store website is very poor, lacking even some of the most basic features that are common on pretty much every e-commerce website, like advanced search and filtering.

So, what is this about?

To cut the long story… Slightly less long…
I was listening to something about doogfooding and great projects being created out of necessity, and I thought - what if I tried to remake the Epic Store, but incorporate some of these features that are lacking currently?

In the immortal words of Jeremy Clarkson, how hard can it be?

Sounds like a potentially interesting project to do… Not only is it a dev project (as opposed to writing a long dry theoretical paper or something like that), but it’s also related to one of my other interests - gaming!

And one other cool thing about it - I can use it as an opportunity to push myself to learn something new and improve my skills. I know in theory I could be learning stuff on my own anytime, at home, after work, in the evenings… But trust me, you get better results when you give yourself some deadlines and a specific goal with certain requirements…

How can you help?

For those of you who would like to contribute… I basically have two things you could help with:

1.

If you have thoughts on what features you would like to see in the Epic Store, or if you know of some good articles or blog posts about the features lacking from it, let me know! I want to have a good number of ideas to choose from, even though I would have to prioritize… But more on that in a future update. (Of course, we are talking only about things that can run in a browser).

2.

For my fellow developers… Any suggestions on technologies or frameworks or services I could use to make this as simple as possible, would be much appreciated.
Bear in mind that I’m only a relatively new front-end developer, and the school requires us to do a full-stack project. Not only is back-end not my thing, I only had some very basic education in SQL and some really old C# stuff, but I’m not very advanced with the front-end stuff either, for example I’ve never used a JS framework of any kind (yes, we do exist).

Wrap it up, dude!

So I might need to learn a bunch of new things for this. But if you have any ideas on how can I make it easier for me, maybe use some kind of a cloud backend solution, like Firebase or something like that… Or if I should learn, say, React for front-end… Please let me know. You can leave comments here or on any of the social media I use (Linktree in my profile).

Oh, and if you’re wondering, the very last deadline for all this is… about a year-ish. But if we can do it faster, that’ll be great.

Also, it just occurred to me, even if this doesn’t get approved by my school… It seems like a good learning project to do anyway… I just hope there’s enough time for it all.

And that’s pretty much it for now. I’ll try to keep you updated. I plan to use YouTube and blog posts for the major updates, and if you’re interested in some less-major, more day-to-day, or week-to-week stuff, there’s my Instagram account.
I also sometimes (when there’s time) post mini- column-styled posts about the industry, or the process of getting the job, maybe Q&As, etc; so, feel free to follow, and I hope to see you around! Take care!

I just got a full-time position as a front-end webdev at the age of 35 in a broken corrupted banana country. Ask Me Anything :)

vladimirp.dev — Mon, 03 Jun 2019 06:09:35 +0000

As some of you know, I've been working as a front-end webdev for several months. And because it's my first time doing that work, there was kind of a "trial" period to see if everything works out... I'm happy to say that it did and that I'm now officially a regular full-time front-end dev, so - Yay! 🤗 ⠀
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One of the (several) reasons why this is more of a big deal for me personally than it would be for, perhaps, some other people, is that I'm 35 years old. So, they are definitely right when they say that there's no such thing as a wrong time to do something!⠀

Another one is that, in my country (Serbia), having any kind of job is pretty hard, let alone a job you actually enjoy.
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Looking forward to hearing from you, have a great day! 👋 ⠀
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My 5 favorite front-end cheat-sheets and bookmarks

vladimirp.dev — Fri, 17 May 2019 18:38:32 +0000

First of all, let me preface this by saying I think it's never a bad idea to go back to basics from time to time.

I'm a firm believer that, no matter how experienced or advanced you are, you should occasionally take some time to revisit the fundamentals of what you do. Don't think of it as taking a step back, think of it more as reinforcing the foundations, to make the house built on them stronger. You tend to find new insights every time you do.⠀

Therefore, even though these posts are mostly aimed at beginners (since I consider myself a beginner as well), maybe some more advanced front-enders will find some of them useful too.

So let's start. Here are my favorite cheat-sheets and bookmarks I always have at my fingertips while I'm working:

1. CSS Grid cheat-sheet

by Malven Co.
grid.malven.co

There are many articles and references for Grid, but this one is absolutely my favorite by far. It is a great visual cheat-sheet with all the settings illustrated and shown on a single page so that you can access (and understand) them with a single glance, which is what a cheat-sheet should be!

2. CSS Flex cheat-sheet

by Malven Co.
flexbox.malven.co

Same as the previous one, but with Flex.
Yes, I like these so much I gave them 2 slots on my list! :)

3. Easing functions

by Andrey Sitnik and Ivan Solovev
easings.net

Linear transitions are so lame, amirite? :)
This one has quite a lot of easing function examples, together with previews for sizes, positions, transparencies and gradients.
Bezier curves included, of course.

4. CSS clip-path maker

by Bennett Feely
bennettfeely.com/clippy

This one enables you to create & preview clip-paths with just a couple of clicks! It's so easy and intuitive.

5. CSS-TRICKS.com

by a big community of cool people
css-tricks.com

Not exactly a cheat-sheet since I couldn't pick just one feature, the whole website is amazing.
Probably the best CSS resource I've seen so far.

Do you have other resources that would fit this list? Feel free to leave them in the comments, I'll check them out, and I might also post them in my Instagram story if I like them.

Have a great week!

Slow and steady

vladimirp.dev — Mon, 06 May 2019 21:21:05 +0000

Today's post can be summarized in one word:⠀
PATIENCE
⠀
Often I see people obsessing too much over trends, what's current, what's new, what's "hot"...⠀
I see them being way too eager to jump on them, often without laying the proper foundation, or even research. Whether it's a new CSS3 feature, a JS framework, a static site generator...⠀
⠀
I prefer to wait & make sure I have the prerequisites and understand them at least to some degree.⠀
Also, the early versions usually end up getting revised and reworked, sometimes drastically, so I think it's smarter to wait for a more stable & reliable version.⠀
Not to mention that some of them end up being fads that go away after a couple months.⠀
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For example, I've been learning front-end for a while now, and even managed to get an internship with it, yet I've still not used a JS framework. Moreover, even if I wanted to learn one, I feel there are still things about ES6 that I should learn more about first.⠀
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That's it for today, happy Monday, have a great week! 👋⠀

Hello World! - Obligatory introduction post

vladimirp.dev — Sun, 05 May 2019 16:27:38 +0000

Hey guys!
I'm not very good at writing. Trying to work on that.
Nor is English my first language.

As my profile says, I'm a "35 year-old junior front-end web developer" from Belgrade, Serbia.

As you can imagine, I only started getting into this industry after the age of 30. It hasn't been easy, especially in a country as broken, corrupted, and twisted as Serbia.

But I finally made it. I finally managed to find a developer job at my age :)

It just goes to show there is no such thing as a wrong time to start doing something. It is an overused phrase, but it really is better late than never.

Previous life

Just in case anyone is interested

A lifetime ago I was aspiring to be a musician, I have an MA degree and all. Sadly, it's not much of a career choice anymore, especially in my environment. So after some years of "beating a dead horse", I finally decided to make a change.

Tech-related education

At the age of 30 (ish) I enrolled in a 3-year e-business program at an IT school.
That e-business program was really broad and covered many related subjects, like e-commerce, e-banking, sales, management, project management, digital marketing, and yes, some web development and programming basics.

The thing is, because we had so many subjects and only 3 years, we didn't go deep into any of them and only kind of scratched the surface with most of them.

That's why, after I was done with all the exams, I needed some time to focus on one or two topics I was most interested in - and I went back and forth between digital marketing and web development for about a year before I found my first job.

What am I doing here?

First of all I wanna say I have no desire of becoming a "professional influencer" or something like that. I don't want to make money doing this, nor do I care about amassing crazy amounts of followers.

I'm mainly here for community interaction - finding like-minded people I can discuss things with, share thoughts and experiences, and learn from.

As for content, I first started sharing some thoughts about jobhunting and the industry, and documenting my journey on Instagram, and some of the posts turned out pretty good, so I'm thinking of sharing them here, roughly once a week.

I called them #TipOfTheWeek on IG, but I'm really bad at coming up with names, so feel free to shoot me suggestions, I'm sure yours will be better than mine.

Have a great day!