Secret Life of the Full Time Web Developer (what they don’t tell you in tutorials)

A peek into the average day of the average web developer after settling into a new company and a new skill set.

Transcript

1. Secret Life of the Full Time Web Developer (what they don’t tell you in tutorials) Rails Girls Atlanta July 29, 2015 Pamela O. Vickers / @pwnela
2. So you want to be a web developer, huh?
3. tutorials
4. project euler
5. exercism.io
6. hackathons
7. meetups
8. tech404.io
10. interviews
11. code samples
12. pairing interviews
13. offers
14. counter offers
16. internship
17. apprenticeship
18. full time junior developer
19. full time senior developer
20. Congrats!
22. Celebrate!
24. …now what?
26. settle in
27. sink or swim sink and swim
28. ✨✨✨✨
29. So how does an average day look and feel once you’re able to tread water?
33. ****don’t do this, even though I do it
36. rebase on master
37. rebase on master (that means my git history now looks like I was working on master all along!)
38. run my full test suite
39. aka, MORE internet
41. “RUNNING THE SPECS” TEST SUITE!
42. *yes, that might mean your tests are too slow
43. **no, we’re not going to talk about that today
44. From this point, we might have two paths:
45. 1) Did the tests pass?
46. 2) Did the tests fail?
47. Let’s follow both paths.
49. Instead of freaking out immediately (easy to do), let’s look at common culprits
50. (this checklist will vary, depending on your project)
51. my checklist?
52. Why are my tests failing? • did I run migrations? • did I “prepare” my test db after? • are there new environment variables that I am missing? • have I restarted my server recently?
53. good news: there are usually error messages.
54. even better news: you can read these error messages!
55. trust your instincts; read the error messages; if you still have failures…then what?
56. to the Slack!
58. you might work on this the rest of the day! yay!
59. OR it might be something obvious! whoops!
60. don’t spin your wheels too long; maybe it is something quick to fix that someone else knows
61. reminder: READ THE ERROR MESSAGE
62. what if the tests pass?
63. congrats, back to work on *that thing* you were working on…
64. now what was it again….?
65. warning: brain farts happen
67. Be like Hansel and Gretel
69. • Leave yourself a failing or pending test that asserts what you need to build or fix next
71. • Leave yourself a failing or pending test that asserts what you need to build or fix next • Leave a comment on your pull request, last commit, or Pivotal Tracker (story tracking tool) about what you’ve done and have left to do
73. • Leave yourself a failing or pending test that asserts what you need to build or fix next • Leave a comment on your pull request, last commit, Pivotal Tracker (story tracking tool) about what you’ve done and have left to do • Leave a WIP commit as a little message to yourself containing whatever loose ends
75. • Leave yourself a failing or pending test that asserts what you need to build or fix next • Leave a comment on your pull request, last commit, Pivotal Tracker (story tracking tool) about what you’ve done and have left to do • Leave a WIP commit, as a little message all to yourself containing whatever loose ends • ?????????<whatever works for you!>?????????
76. So, now you’re coding.
78. exciting, right?
83. but then…
87. rinse, repeat
89. remember what we did when the specs were failing?
90. basically that.
94. (screenhero)
99. it ain’t easy!
100. but that’s what they’re paying you for!
101. post breakthrough:
102. clean it up
103. push it to github (or wherever)
104. (probably) create a pull request
105. ask for code reviews from your team mates
106. brace yourself; comments are coming
109. coffee
110. looking at / applying / dealing with code changes
111. writing / fixing your own code
112. getting blocked & unblocked (repeatedly)
113. asking for help and feedback from teammates or mentors
114. always learning new things / approaches
115. yep… that’s about it
116. does this sound familiar?
117. The daily life of a developer?
118. troubleshooting, communicating, creating
123. ❔❔
124. Thanks!
125. Links • tech404.io (#beginners_and_mentors, #all-the-nerdy- ladies, #rails-bridge-atl, #rails-hartl-tutorial, many others!) • screenhero.com (great for screen sharing) • google.com • stackoverflow.com • giphy.com • melissa.holmes.io/speaking.html (for talk on Pry)