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

As given to the Ladies of Tech Talent South meetup
April 21, 2016

Transcript

1. Secret Life of the Full Time Web Developer (what they don’t tell you in tutorials) Ladies of TTS April 21, 2016 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
9. AlltheNerdyLadies.slack.com
11. interviews
12. code samples
13. pairing interviews
14. offers
15. counter offers
17. internship
18. apprenticeship
19. full time junior developer
20. full time senior developer
21. Congrats!
24. Celebrate!
27. …now what?
30. settle in
31. sink or swim
32. sink and swim
33. ✨✨✨✨
34. So how does an average day look and feel once you’re able to tread water?
41. ****don’t do this, even though I do it
46. rebase on master
47. rebase on master (that means my git history now looks like I was working on master all along!)
48. run my full test suite
49. aka, MORE internet
54. “RUNNING THE SPECS” TEST SUITE!
55. *yes, that might mean your tests are too slow
56. **no, we’re not going to talk about that today
57. From this point, we might have two paths:
58. 1) Did the tests pass?
59. 2) Did the tests fail?
60. Let’s follow both paths.
62. Instead of freaking out immediately (easy to do), let’s look at common culprits
63. (this checklist will vary, depending on your project)
64. my checklist?
65. 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?
66. good news: there are usually error messages.
67. even better news: you can read these error messages!
68. trust your instincts; read the error messages; if you still have failures…then what?
69. to the Slack!
71. you might work on this the rest of the day! yay!
72. OR it might be something obvious! whoops!
73. don’t spin your wheels too long; maybe it is something quick to fix that someone else knows
74. reminder: READ THE ERROR MESSAGE
75. reminder: READ THE ERROR MESSAGE
76. what if the tests pass?
77. congrats, back to work on *that thing* you were working on…
78. now what was it again….?
79. warning: brain farts happen
82. Be like Hansel and Gretel
85. • Leave yourself a failing or pending test that asserts what you need to build or fix next
87. • 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
89. • 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
91. • 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!>?????????
92. So, now you’re coding.
94. exciting, right?
103. but then…
110. rinse, repeat
113. remember what we did when the specs were failing?
114. basically that.
119. (screenhero)
127. it ain’t easy!
128. but that’s what they’re paying you for!
129. post breakthrough:
130. clean it up
131. push it to github (or wherever)
132. (probably) create a pull request
133. ask for code reviews from your team mates
134. brace yourself; comments are coming
138. coffee
139. coffee
140. looking at / applying / dealing with code changes
141. writing / fixing your own code
142. getting blocked & unblocked (repeatedly)
143. asking for help and feedback from teammates or mentors
144. always learning new things / approaches
145. yep… that’s about it
146. does this sound familiar?
147. The daily life of a developer?
148. troubleshooting, communicating, creating
153. ❔❔
154. Thanks!
155. Links • tech404.io (#beginners_and_mentors, #all-the-nerdy- ladies, #rails-bridge-atl, #rails-hartl-tutorial, many others!) • allthenerdyladies.slack.com (ask Megan!) • screenhero.com (great for screen sharing) • google.com • stackoverflow.com • giphy.com • melissa.holmes.io/speaking.html (for talk on Pry)