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Introduced a New Series 🎉"TLDR"
I started a new series called, "TLDR" (Too Long; Didn't Read). Many of you know I always have accompanying code notes for my code tidbits. The code notes are often jammed packed. It's great because it's filled with tons of information. But the downside, it's sometimes way too much to consume. "TLDR" is a new series aim to solve this! It will be mini chunks of the code notes. It's like creating an appetizer from the main course - more easy to digest and more fun to eat 😋
This series is still in experimental stage, so you can only find it on my Twitter and Instagram account. Once I have a bit more of these, I'll add them to my website 👍
🧗🏻♀️#SamDocs
Documenting my journey as a developer
Focus on the fundamentals
A turning point in my career when I finally feel like I am an actual developer was when I started understanding the fundamentals. How I discovered this is quite embarrassing 😖
My first tech job was a web developer where I just build out websites. After doing that for a few years, I wanted to advance my career and become a front end developer. There was an opportunity within the existing company at the time, I applied and fortunately got it.
For the first time, I was finally getting assigned tickets and looking into problems. Previously as a web developer, all I did was build out websites based on mockups. My first ticket involved to debug something that was broken in our app. I don't remember the details, all I remembered was that I couldn't solve it. I spun my wheels for a few days because I was so embarrassed to ask for help.
Finally, I got a senior developer to pair up with me. The problem turned out to be a conditional checking for all falsy values instead of capturing a specific value. Great, problem solved and the ticket was closed. You think I should be feeling great right. NO! Because I didn't even understand what falsy values meant in JavaScript. I was unable to debug the problem because I never took the time to understand how JavaScript works, I didn't know the fundamentals. I was creating an array using a standard `=` and not understanding why the original array was mutated -- I didn't know arrays were reference values 🤦♀️
After a series of embarrassments, I decided no more! My company at the time had a Pluralsight team account so I had access to a lot of amazing content. It's where I discovered Kyle Simpson. Watching his videos changed my development career.
Once I started understanding the fundamentals, things started to make sense. I finally understand the "why" of things. And when you understand the "why", then you can attempt to implement better solutions or how to fix things when it's broken. I think it's one of the reasons why I focus on the fundamentals in my tidbits. Because if you want to become a better programmer, you have to know the fundamentals!