Alfred, Screenhero, ColorSnapper, and Gimp!

It's been so crazy this week at ZipList learning so many new things I can hardly remember all of them to tell you. I totally recommend to everyone that if you are learning to program to get "Alfred" it's a free Mac app and is 100% better then the finder window in Mac for finding things quickly and effectively.

I also recommend setting up LOTS of bash shell aliases to everything not just a couple commands because it's all about speed and efficiency when you're working at a company it's about getting things done well and as quickly as possible not wasting time, it helps to have lots of shortcuts. I'm still working on a lot of mine :-)

The best thing of all I have learned about has been "Screenhero" it's a free app that allows you to literally go on to the other person's computer. You can go on their computer and the user will see two arrows one is your mouse and one is the other person's mouse. It's great for working with people remotely especially if there's something that I don't understand and need help with, it's a quick fix on any and all errors I am totally going to use it pair programming from now on.

I'm learning quite a bit about responsive web design which is awesome! I  bought "ColorSnapper" which was the best four dollars I have ever spent! I totally recommend "ColorSnapper" for finding colors quickly and very easy-to-use. It copies the colors you click on to your clip board, it is a lifesaver if you're doing anything CSS related.

I even been using Gimp some this week resizing images, cropping, and scaling I don't know much about Gimp, but it's been great so far. Tomorrow is officially my last day of shoeing horses hopefully for the rest of my life :-) I have one trim to do tomorrow and then I am having a " get spoiled day".

My wife Elisha and I are going out on the town, an hour massage, then shopping and getting some books to celebrate the end of shoeing/goal accomplished! Tomorrow should be a fun time I can't wait!

The entire team at ZipList has helped me grow so much in the last week, I swear working one week full-time is like studying a month and a half on your own! I'm not keeping track of hours anymore because it would be silly, but I still plan on keeping track of what I'm learning and roughly how long stuff takes and things like that.

Learning to code is like a giant puzzle with about 1 million tiny pieces I feel like right now I've got the border on the very edge of the puzzle almost completed and I can now look inside and go wow look at all the rest there is to learn... I love it!

-Josh

Ruby on Rails Interviewing (part 1)

Since I am happily hired now, I thought I would spill the beans on my interviewing experience. Now all the things I say, none of them apply to my current employer Zip List.

When I first launched my site Josh's Site after 6 months of training/studying RoR, I was immediately offered 2 jobs on day 1. One job offer was for $40K the other for $35K. I of course passed. It took the next 2.5 months to finally get hired at an awesome company, but along the way, there was a TON of other interviews. In the stories you read I won't use the real companies name, as I don't want to offend or possible hurt my employment chances if I were to need them down the road :-)

The good news is, I averaged  around 3-4 phone screens per week and 1-2 second interviews, and usually I landed a final interview every 2 weeks. The first thing I learned was that recruiters will try to knock down your price if you don't have a degree saying things like: "How much?....oh, I don't know, you're going to be a kind of a tough sell without a degree...are you "flexible" on salary?"

Thankfully my mentor the great +David Bock gave me a warning that this probably would happen, and to stick to my guns, he evened helped me figure out what ball park figure I should be asking for.

Thanks to +Americo Saviñón I started a LinkedIn profile and per his recommendation made sure to list several key words like: "Ruby", "Rails","Ruby on Rails". Between LinkedIn,  Dice.com,  and Indeed.com I was getting around 20-25 emails a week from recruiters asking for my resume in word format and more information about my background. Half of the jobs would require relocating to another state which I didn't want to do.

I also had several people on Twitter ask me how much I wanted as a salary and would I consider relocating. One offer almost had me packing up and moving. I decided to give the Northern Va area 1 more month and then if nothing still had finalized I would consider moving, thankfully it didn't come to that.

Hopefully that brings you up to speed on what I was doing/dealing with during that 2.5 month period besides working full time,  studying,  and trying to get hired. The hardest part doing this period of time was that it was Summer, and I was super busy everyday shoeing horses, and had a VERY hard time keeping up with my weekly hourly goals.

I am loving writing my ebook, I think I can speed up anyone trying to become a junior developer quite a bit, half of my problem was never knowing what exactly I should be working on, and switching back and forth wasting a lot of time. Anyway,  I'll keep you posted,  more to come on interviewing.

-Josh

First Full Week At Zip List!!

One solid full week of life as a developer has come to an end! I am hooked like an addict! I love learning about everything IT/Web related.

A few Months ago I met for coffee with +Spencer Pingry , we talked for about an hour and he gave me some great advice that helped me on my learning journey. The one thing he said to me stuck in my brain, and I wanted to pass it along to you because I have found it to be 100% true.

"Studying 3 hours every night after your full time job and staying awake even though you're tired is very admirable, but there is nothing like being fresh and full of energy and getting to work with other developers 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week. You will learn like nothing else."

I share that not to discourage you that you can't learn to code on your own, but to encourage you that once you do get hired, you will learn like NEVER before!

I hate to brag, but the Zip List team is top notch, the team is so smart there are literally "ninja coders", developers come in wearing capes! I mean, I can't help but learn at a super fast rate! I can feel my brain absorbing knowledge through osmosis as I sit next to operational wizards like +Steve Annessa , the man's a genius.

Anyway, you can see how much I am suffering at my new job/life as a junior developer :-) Don't give up peeps, keep coding, it does get better, much better!

I just hope no body realizes what's going on...I mean getting paid to learn to code, how is that legal :-)

-Josh

Typing, Shortcuts, Speed

Wow, I thought I was getting almost okay when it came to typing, and finding stuff on my Mac. Since starting at Zip List, I feel like a BABY! My goodness these other peeps seem like they want to literally kill their keyboard!

I hunt and peck away and think: "Okay, not too bad speed" Then I look beside me and hear a developer typing so fast it seems like either him or his keyboard are on crack!  I haven't even BEGUN to mention all of these "black magic" shortcuts I see people typing into their machines, and I'm like: "Uh,.....what was that?"

I need to learn a ton of new things, but I really do think I need to learn some basic "Nano" just because it comes as a built in text editor on Macs, so no matter what, I would be able to open up a file and edit, save it and not be like:"Oh, you don't have Sublime, ... I can't help you."

I also need to learn short cuts better, and double my typing speed. Not just double the speed, but type while not looking down at the keys. I'll work on it and let you know how things come along.

Last but not least, I going to write an ebook on how to to get hired as a junior developer, even if you don't have a degree(like me) and start off with no experience. I hope to have the ebook done sometime in October.

If you have any questions, or thoughts that you think my be helpful to me, please shoot me an email at: joshuakemp85@gmail.com.

-Josh

First week at Zip List

First Week at Zip List was AWESOME! Well, actually only 2 days, but seriously it was heaven on earth. I promised to always be honest with you, so I will tell you, it is EASIER when you finally make it to the "promise land" and actually get paid to LEARN!

I got a brand new top of the line Mac book pro and my own new keyboard, wireless mouse, and a brand new top of the line monitor, not to mention a kick butt awesome chair. The first half of the day consisted of getting everything set up and the second half of the day was spent trying to figure out how to adjust all the cool knobs on my chair, to get everything adjusted just right.

I did learn a lot of new things:

1. I Learned about Asana and got a basic overview.

2. I Learned about Pivotal Tracker and got a basic overview.

3. I Learned  a lot more about PATHS in Unix (PATHS are So tricky and confusing to me).

4. I Used NANO for the first time(it's built into Unix just like Vim, just type in "nano")

5. I Saw Google effects used for the first time, while attending my first meeting.

6. I enjoyed my first free company lunch(every Thursday).

7. I Learned about Lime Chat, how to set it up and use it.

8. I Set up my new work email, and learned how to use filters(after receiving 93 emails in what seemed like 5 minutes).

9. I Did my first test.

10. I Got my first paycheck!( I checked the mail today on my to go upstairs to my apartment, and lo and behold I had a check, and I had just finished my 2nd day!).

11. I had a kick butt awesome 45 minute talk/teaching on Html & Css by 2 great developers!I learned tons of things that I didn't know and it also helped me to understand WHY we do certain things.

Anyway, not to brag, just to encourage others on the "Learning To Code" path, it is really nice when you finally get hired so keep on keeping on!

I will try and be less of a braggart in the next post :-)

I still feel like I am in a dream, I mean, I get paid to LEARN all this cool new stuff and get to use top of the line technology while I'm doing it?....Sign me up!

-Josh