Coming from http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/m1494/looking_for_a_developer_advocate_for_shopify/ or elsewhere? Awesome.
This is a guide for learning the bare minimum needed for effectively working as a junior programmer or developer advocate at most software companies.
If you haven’t ever programmed before, don’t sweat it. Those who would be good fits at this job are naturally attuned to this stuff and their innate curiosity makes it a cakewalk. If you’re finding that it’s a frustrating experience the entire way through, then you should consider doing something else for a little while before you come back to give it another shot.
Start off by giving Try Ruby (an in-browser programming tutorial) a shot and seeing how much fun you have.
If you’re able to finish it, then give Rails for Zombies a shot. The end goal here is that we want you to eventually be able to write a Shopify App so you can coach others on how to do the same, as well as spotting opportunities for where an app could make someone’s life easier.
On that, it may be helpful to write a simple app in Ruby on Rails. Following along with a book like The Rails Tutorial Book will walk you through everything you need to get your first app built and running online.
Sidenote: if you’re running into trouble with learning Ruby, definitely give Learn Ruby the Hard Way a shot. Note that if you’re running Windows, you should try http://railsinstaller.org/. If you're still having trouble you might be better off with installing VMWare and running Ubuntu Linux inside of Windows as programming Ruby on Windows is still tough going.
Once you’ve got some basic programming skills together, make a Github account and create your first project repo (repository). An intro to Git and Github can be found here.
Format a README.md (that’s .md for Markdown), stick your resume in there and send it over. Alternatively, create a Github Gist like this one and ping me with a link.
Post on Stack Overflow or ask in Ottawa Ruby if you run into any problems during this tech gauntlet. Don’t worry; you got the powerrrrrrrr
