• On Life and Love

    Beginner Developer: Where to Start?

    I have a friend who’s looking to become a marketable developer fairly quickly, but is essentially trying to go from zero to hero. Despite starting a project in Python to randomize wedding slideshows, he’s never really done development, nor does he understand its core concepts (classes vs. objects, for instance). He kinda just needs a job, plus the ability to make useful tools for himself. Folks are telling him Java and *.NET, and I (mostly) agree for the simple purposes of 1) easy desktop or web development, and 2) using keyword-heavy languages to reinforce programming concepts. Not strong reasons, no. If he just wanted a job, I’d recommend UI development.…

  • On Life and Love

    Quasi-daily linkage

    My Java Experience – This is a great post on a .NETer taking a course in Java EE. I haven't done Java EE development before, but this makes me want to try it out of masochism. "All in all, I find myself unimpressed by the amount of work that was shuffled to the tools, it doesn’t seem right. And it seems like a justification of a bad practice. When I consider my own design principles (Zero Friction!) in light of this, I am much happier that I am mainly working in the .NET world. But I think that having this understanding is going to be very helpful moving forward." Coding…