That Amazing Programmer

Coffee Chat FAQ

How did you get started? When I was around 14 years old, I was stuck all Summer indoors. I spent a lot of time on the family's first computer. I was interested in how websites and applications worked. I decided I wanted to work with computers as a career, so I went to college to be a software developer.

I quickly found that no one wanted to hire a software developer with no real-world experience out of college. While job hunting at a coffee shop, the WIFI went out. I offered to restart the router, and they gave me a free cup of coffee. It occurred to me that I just got paid to do something IT-related.

I went on to run an IT consulting business for the next several years and learned that when you're looking for a job, people care about your experience and degree, but when you run a business, they assume you know what you're doing.
What advice would you give to a new developer? Most of my advice is this stuff you've probably already heard.

Create projects and keep the source somewhere public, like GitHub. It helps other developers in the interview understand how you go about solving problems and your code style.

Make a blog and write about your projects. You can quickly make a free blog on Hashnode or Dev.to. It's always great to read about what someone was thinking and how they went about solving problems.

Once you start job hunting you'll have two routes available to you. If for any reason you need stability choose a salary position. If you're able to take on a little risk, I'd highly suggest hopping from a short-term contract to a short-term contract; you'll make a lot of money because you won't really get any benefits, and you'll learn a lot in a short amount of time.
Do you have any ideas for apps I could make? If you don't know what kind of project to make, find a business template website and make an actual application based on the template. An example would be you see a template for a salon website, but it's just a template that doesn't do anything. You take the idea of the salon website and make it into an actual web application where you can book clients.

Here's a list of ideas:
  • Clones
    • Instagram
    • Whatsapp
    • Netflix
    • Pinterest
    • Giphy
  • E-Book website
  • File Sharing App
  • Dating App
  • Social Media Dashboard
  • Tracker App
    • It's been X days since Event
    • This task took X time
  • Memory Card Game
  • Chess Game
  • Music Player
  • To-Do App
  • Make a random user API
    • An API that returns a randomly generated user
  • Typing Speed Test
  • Calculator
  • Quiz App
  • Rock Paper Scissors
  • Note App
  • Stopwatch App
  • QR Code Generator/Reader
  • Weather App
  • Password Generator
  • Tic Tac Toe Game
  • Link Shortner
  • Food Order Website
  • Meme Generator
  • Movie App
  • Chat App
  • Survey App
What is a T-Shaped developer ? A T-shaped developer has expert knowledge and experience in a particular area. That knowledge represents the vertical bar of T.

They also have general knowledge of other fields and can collaborate with other developers to achieve a common goal. That’s the horizontal bar of the letter T.

Check back soon to see my upcoming blog post about the subject.
Do you have any advice on interviewing? Checkout these books:
What tools or links do you recommend for new developers? Dev.to

If you're a veteran, check out Operation Code, they have a lot of great resources only available to veterans.

Check out my Resources page