My name is Mason Ellwood, and I’m currently working on Flatiron School’s Online Full Stack Web Development Program. Each week, I’ll be writing about my experience, what I’m learning, and tips on learning to code.
For this post, I am going to deviate from my super interesting posts about servers and talk a little about the job that I recently started at Fyresite.
As you all know roughly four weeks ago I started working at Fyresite, as one of their Front-End Developers. And so far I am really enjoying my time there. But I don’t want to talk about how happy I am, and I doubt you really want to read about that.
As there Front-End guy it basically has been a crash course into the Front-End world and just how much I still need to learn to quicken my pace and keep up. I am fairly adequate in low-level languages but with a new job, there is always a learning curve into new technologies and how they go about building out custom sites that sometimes seems over my head.
My first week, I had a full site drop into my lap. 10 plus pages, custom layout with WordPress, with three other developers work compiled onto it. Giving me both a launching point to get up and running and also a lot to sift through to see how they have been going about building this thing out. With this project, I have had to brush up on many different languages and some that I never thought this early on I would be using.
So roughly this posts purpose is not to scare you away in an “I don’t know enough” fashion, as is how I saw it for so long. But once you know some core web fundamentals, it will be easy to use what you know to apply them to whatever projects that come your way.
My first project as a paid Front-End Web Developer I have been very accustoming to using HTML, CSS, WordPress platform, Javascript, jQuery, PHP, FTP, SQL, and AJAX. The software I have been using includes Photoshop, Cyberduck, Atom, MAMP, Sequel Pro, Sketch, Insomnia, and the GitHub Desktop app. Like I said it is a lot to take in. Currently we are working on a desktop app that uses SASS, NODE, and React. And again, I am in my fourth week of work. So what does all this mean?
Basically how I see it, is that is that you will never be absolutely ready to enter into the Development world, me included. But like all great developers you have to see yourself as a useful multi tool.
What do you need to and pulling that broad knowledge base you have to find useful solutions to problems. The job of a developer is to fix what is broken, and being the reason is broke in the first place may leave you in a weird spot. But it should not. I walked into this job, knowing only the near sighted fundamentals of many different languages, where Fyresite comes in, is allowing you to use what you have learned and giving you a platform to make solutions and solve a problem.
It is no different than school, or even The Flatiron School. They display a usable solution to a problem that you may encounter. And give you an an example of a situation to solve using the knowledge you have gained. Even though the environment varies, you still have to think about the solution the same way. This is one of the greatest strengths I am able to walk away from The Flatiron School, a stable platform to launch myself off of to solve problems.
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