Still so Much to Learn

Yesterday was the dawn of a new day for me; after 6 months of working my tail off to reach a goal, I finally achieved that goal. It's important that I take the time to recognize this great achievement and revel in it for a moment, which I have. Now it's time to get back to work. I'm still at the very beginning of this life-long learning journey. In JavaScript alone, I would say I'm at about 60% competency with the language. With that said, JavaScript is only one small corner of programming. Sure, I've learned a fair deal of CSS, HTML, and a variety of other skills surrounding web development that don't directly involve JavaScript, but if you look at the big picture, I've maybe learned about half of a percent of everything I could possibly know. Not to mention, this is an industry that is constantly evolving and changing, meaning if I were to stop at that 0.5%, in a year's time that may only represent a quarter of a percent of everything programming-related. I don't think I could ever achieve complete mastery of programming, but I have lofty goals, nonetheless. I plan to get as far as I can in this lifetime.

I'm also still wrapping up some applications with other companies that I started in the last few weeks. I applied to a company sometime last week who sent me a questionnaire a few days ago, and apparently I was one of 8 applicants to advance past this first stage of their interview process. So, they gave me a "Developer Challenge," which consisted of 8 questions. They asked me to choose 3 of these questions and respond back with my answers when I'm done. I got off work this afternoon and busted that out pretty quickly. While there were a couple questions more difficult than the ones I answered, I felt that I wouldn't be able to give the best answers to those questions. The ones I chose focused heavily on JavaScript, and I think my answers were really solid. This company is about an hour away from where I live right now, so I wouldn't have to move right away if I got this job. However, the company I'm waiting for an official offer from that I interviewed with yesterday is literally 12 minutes away from my house and 5 minutes from my daughter's daycare. It would be nice to have a couple offers to leverage a higher wage, but we'll see if the timing aligns.

Now, it's time to get back to work. About a week ago, I started a course by Colt Steele and Stephen Grider called "The New Modern JavaScript Bootcamp." When I started this course, it was about 42.5 hours long, which is a pretty hefty course. Since then, they've added another 9.5 hours to bring it up to 52 hours total. This is a lot of content from 2 phenomenal teachers at the low price of $9.99. If you haven't taken any courses from either of these 2 gentlemen, I would highly recommend the small investment. Between the 2 of them, they have enough curriculum to keep you occupied for a solid year and bring you up to speed in a lot of different ways. I haven't yet taken anything by Stephen Grider, but I hear only great things about his work. Once I get to his half of the course, I'll be able to say more definitively. I can definitely vouch for Colt Steele. His courses have been as transformative to getting me to where I am today as Will Sentance's courses were on Frontend Masters, if not more. Without taking his "Web Developer Bootcamp," it probably would have taken me a lot longer to get where I am right now. If the course I'm taking was available 4 months ago, I think it would have been just as much of an accelerant. I'm still getting so much value out of it, and I still have 33 hours to go!

Until tomorrow!