dayAsADev

A day as a Developer

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What is this all about?

As an agile team member working in tech you have the fortune/misfortune to work with developers. We try to work using agile methodologies and this includes the concept of the cross-functional team. This is about the big picture. A team has a goal that it needs to achieve, how it gets there should be the preserve of the team and this should not be hampered by job titles and/or narrow working silos. Having a common level of understanding and a common language across the team can help to break down these silos creating a highly performing team.

Now when it comes to obscure language and weird acronyms, I have to admit, developers need to shoulder much of the blame. So think of this course as a tortuous apology and, as the quickest way to learn something is to do it, you will now get to spend the next day as a developer.

So how do you "be a developer". The truth is that the job requires a broad range of skills and the willingness to dive into something that you know almost nothing about, learn it, use that knowledge to fix your current problem and then find another problem and do it all again. It's about leveraging a large range of skills, technologies and languages putting them all together and making things that work, even when it is particularly bewildering. That's the ideal anyway.

This course is designed to mimic this process in a structured way. The first half will walk you through key concepts and provide some foundational knowledge. As we move on things will start to get a little harder, there will be fewer explicit answers and you will need to find and provide your own solutions. Hopefully, it will push you out of your comfort zone while teaching you a few new things along the way.

Let's begin!

Precourse and Setup

Prior to this course you should have completed everything in the Precourse Setup Section ▶️

Before moving forward please ensure that you have all the accounts required.

How to follow this Course

Nothing in the course is designed as a trap. If you follow the material you should end the day with a working Minimum Viable Product website that can be deployed for the rest of the world to see! There are only two rules:

• Type every line of code yourself. While it can seem faster to copy and paste it stops you from learning what's going on.
• You don't need to understand everything. Understanding is vital but so is managing how much you need to know - there is only so much time in the day and we want to have a working website at the end of this particular day. It isn't possible to understand everything.

What do I do if I get stuck

One of the first problems to overcome as a developer is getting stuck. It's a tricky one because getting stuck sucks especially when you have no idea how to get unstuck. The good news is that all developers have been there so the following guidelines provide a handrail to follow throughout the day when you face a problem and can't seem to find a way out.

1. Try to work out what is actually going on. It sounds patronising but if you can describe the problem you have an idea of what's blocking you. Even if it is in vague terms if you then need to seek help you can at the very least describe the problem accurately.
2. Talk everything through with your pair partner, bounce ideas off each other. Take a quick break and then approach the problem again as though it is the first time you have encountered it.
3. Throughout the preceding steps try to gather keywords that relate to the problem like, 'Array' or 'Terminal'.
4. Isolate error keywords. If you have an error message, identify and add these keywords to your results from (3).
5. Google! Research the problem using your keywords. Also use the keywords to indentify relevant results (i.e. not just the first one).
6. Other pairs of Developers. Take your well-described, well formatted question to another developer or pair of developers; they may have encountered the same problem and know how to solve it.
7. Coach/Senior Developer. If all else fails take your question all the way to the top. Don't be disappointed though if the answer comes as more questions.

Consider bookmarking this page for quick reference as you go through the course.

Start Developing

When you're ready click the link to navigate to the first section ▶️

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? Acknowledgements ?