Daniel,
I will definitely touch on that. Basically, I feel like I could have become more comfortable:
- Using my Mac: adding things like Spectacle to manage my windows and learning the shortcut keys.Learning to navigate without the mouse is very important.
- Typing code: There are sites like typing.io to practice writing all the weird characters in programming languages. An overlooked skill.
- Using the Command Line/Terminal/Shell: I had no idea what the Command Line was, what it could do, and how to enter commands for things like creating, editing, deleting, and opening files and folders. I could have set up aliases for common commands like moving up or down a directory in my shell/terminal/bash profile to navigate my filesystem more easily and use github (see below) better. Also included in this, I would have set some dotfiles in an environment profile to make my terminal pretty blue instead of the black and white.
- Another huge area is git and github, which are a pain to learn, but are really necessary if you're going to ever work as a developer.
There are a lot of great learning resources that are git-based, and taking advantage of those is usually the best way that programmers get better at programming
things like:
- Katrina Owen's Exercisms
- Seth Vincent's Javascripting, and
- Martin Dunisch's Lololodash
Also, none of the technical areas above relate to the general cluelessness I had about what a professional developer does on a daily basis. I had vague ideas about turning my ideas into reality and building websites, but I didn't know how the internet worked or what a website really was.
All this information is out there, but it's not collected well into one source and it is difficult to navigate if you are a beginner with zer0 experience.
So helpful, thanks! I am excited for Saturday.