I am new to programming. Actually I have gone through a lot of JS full stack programming tutorials and currently taking a course on CodeShool, but haven't written any app yet.
When you started how did you code your first app, was it difficult?
The hardest part of any coding problem is looking at the mountainous problem and trying to get to the top. The only way is to break it up into as small of chunks as you can and just work through those one by one. Also, make sure you let all your thoughts flow out and type them in as comments as you work on it. Even if your thoughts are "wtf is going on with this string why is it returning a fcking array where it should be a string this is impossible oh maybe if i just have it console log A here then i can see what the previous function is passing idk man fcuck!"
as long as you open your internal dialogue to flow out into tge code you will work through it and then if you take a break and come back to it you wont lose your place or thought process at all.
My first programs where writ in BASIC copying code line by line from hobby magazines. Eventually I figured out what different things did by changing little bits and seeing what happens. Same technique applies today but on a way more interesting scale. Copying is significantly easier! And learning by doing is getting easier every day too.
A great technique for trying lots of different changes is by writing tests. I like to use tape with tap-spec to write my tests. Here's an example github.com/brianleroux/tiny-json-http/blob/master… …I make a small change, run the tests to see what happens, rinse and repeat.
I recommend getting familiar with deploying. All the time. The more you ship the closer you'll get to something novel or, at least, interesting.
glitch.com seems like a really great place to learn. There's the tooling to ship code built in, lots of examples and a friendly dev community to boot. Good luck and don't hesitate to ask more questions! 🚀
I do a lot of frontend work on different apps and websites, but these are usually either an off-the-shelf product or something that somebody else has built. I have goals of making apps in the next few years but right now I'm focusing on learning programming better.
When I think about the closest thing I've built to a custom app, there were a few websites that I built using WordPress plus a really great plugin called Advanced Custom Fields. The ACF plugin let you define custom entries in the database and provided a very powerful backend editor…editor. You could add custom fields and editors and file uploads on the backend, and then display the data from these custom fields anywhere in the template on the frontend of the website.
I used this functionality to build a few 100% 'custom' designed CMS websites where we designed each page carefully, then replicated all of the content areas using Custom fields, we even added extra theme options they could toggle in the editing backend (things like color themes, alignment, choice of icons, etc). For each page on the live site there was an equivalent backend editor with exactly the same content.
Looking back on it, it worked but it really wasn't the Correct™ way to build a custom CMS. It was still vulnerable to 100% of WordPress vulnerabilities, but we weren't really using much of WordPress other than the backend editor and this plugin as a way to construct custom editors that a user could log into.
I think if I was going to approach the same projects now I'd be using something simpler, without any parts that we didn't need. I wonder if there are simple 'backend editor' builders we could use to generate the backend we need one time, instead of relying on something like WordPress as a software platform to run our 'backend editor builder' on top of.
While in school, I used to write code for pure pleasure or interest. They were really tiny applications with no real-world application. My interest in programming professionally started once I graduated from university. Since then, the first real application that I built from scratch was for my first startup Gharpay. We had to build an order management dashboard for our clients. Post the meeting, I had to come back and google the word "Dashboard". Before that, I had only coded in C and has no idea about web programming. Ruby seemed to be the language du jour for building web applications. So, I
Was it hard? Not really. At first, it was a little frustrating coming to terms with the web paradigms. Soon I got used to thinking along those lines. It was definitely scary when I launched my first "production" application. I was now the master of my own fate.
If you're just starting out, I would highly recommend, you just build something. You can either take an open-source project and add a feature, or find an application that you like (written in another language) and write it in JS (or whichever language you are learning). This helps you chalk out your feature roadmap and you don't need to think about what you need to build.
Alternatively, convince someone to pay you to build an application. The fire a client will light under your ass is the greatest source of inspiration I've ever experienced. :)
Devin Heffernan
DHeff
I don’t know how to write an app but I need help from someone who does. Check my profile and see if you’re interested in my idea please 😁