This question is asked everyday by aspiring programmers everywhere. I have been wondering this very question from Day 1, even through the days that I am learning a language. We all have different aspirations of where we want our programming career to take us. That dream job, field, or company we want to work for.

I think this response from P1xt will sum it all up. It definitely hit me on the head, like a ton of bricks. †

I think App Academy is a great start — no matter your eventual destination. The reason being: it doesn’t ‘just’ teach a language (ruby and javascript) a framework (rails) or a library (react). It teaches software engineering principles that will help you learn to write good code. Code that’s efficient, modular, easy to read, tested and easy to test. The fact that it’s being taught using ruby as the language is pretty irrelevant — you’re there to learn concepts, and from what I’ve seen thusfar in the course, ruby is a language that makes teaching those concepts simple — whatever you go onto next, the concepts will remain ‘the important part’ and they will translate to whatever language you end up using.

Sure, eventually you may have to learn “Fabric, or Solidity, Viper, Go, etc.” but learning a language or library is NOT the hard part … learning to write code that isn’t shitty is the hard part, you learn that once and learn it well, and the rest will be a breeze by comparison. App Academy Open isn’t just about learning Ruby, if it were just that, I’d say it’s not relevant to your goals. But, it is relevant — it will teach you to write good code, a skill that will inform all your future coding, and all your future learning. It is worth it.

This response to a question I asked on Medium can be see here.

Stop focusing on which language to learn, but the quality of code that I will be typing for the rest of my career and the concrete principals behind those decisions. Efficiency, effectiveness, simplicity, security.

I have looked far and wide, scouring the internet for this very answer. Here it is, plain as day. You can find similar answers on Quora, Blockgeek, reddit, and many other sites. I like this one the best though.

For those of you who are unaware, I am moving forward to becoming a blockchain developer. I am unsure yet if my end game goal will be to work on smart contracts, dapps, security, blockchains them selves, or anything else relevant. The field around blockchain technology and its use cases range far and wide. We will see which direction I am blown to.

I try to break up my days of learning coding languages with researching new tech ideas, the development of blockchain, oracles, crpyto, etc., and work on side projects.

Over the last week I have been reading about Ethereum 2.0, blockchain oracles, and other blockchain-based platforms focusing on dApp development and scaling.

All this information I consume is great. Great for ideas, great for knowing what is, and what isn’t. It’s great for assisting in direction. Also, it great for investment purposes. Most people aren’t reading hours a day about blockchains and what all is involved, let alone about leading ideas, what is lacking, partnerships to accomplish bigger and better ideas.

Some hot companies to make sure your watching:

• Tron (TRX)
• EOS
• Cardano (ADA)
• Chainlink (LINK)

Crypto Wallets

If you don’t know about a crypto wallet, read this article, by Blockgeeks:

Cryptocurrency Wallet Guide: A Step-By-Step Tutorial

You must protect your digital assets and their are quite a few ways to do so. The article presented will go over different ways to do so that best fits your way of life.

I personally will either store them via. a paper wallet, or hardware wallet made from an already owned USB drive.

Currently in School…

I am working through P1xt’s updated software developer curriculum 4.0. I worked through most of the LearnEnough Tutorials, which were phenomenal. Rarely do intro coding tutorials help you entirely set-up a development work station. He provides a virtual machine with all the necessary software to start off with. Then quickly provides all the instructions to set up your own station, with open sourced software, add-ons, and customization. Here is that link, LearnEnough. When I was working through the tutorials they were free. They have now been pay walled (not super expensive).

With P1xt’s updated curriculum and recommendations, I have been working through a new set of courses covering Ruby, provided by App Accademy. They have posted their entire paid platform for free and self paced. If you end up liking it, you can always upgrade and pay for their upgraded assistance.

Staying Sane Day-to-Day

Domino, the Australian Shepherd pup, about 3 months old now, keeps me going outside quite often. She brings more happiness to the people around me than I ever could have imagined. Worth every aggravating moment of puppy training.

I have to say, it hasn’t been as easy as I thought it was going to be. To be behind a keyboard “most” of the day, learning. Part of the challenge is a new Australian Shepherd puppy that has to go out every couple hours and needs to be entertained and trained. Plus, I have to get a workout in at least every other day!

All the action is happening on a used MSI GT70 2PC Dominator that I picked up for $300. I got some Klipsch Reference bookshelf speakers to entertain me and try to keep me focused on something other than the bad music quality coming from my flat screen TV positioned behind my laptop screen.

I have begun working through P1xt’s course plan posted on GitHub, also listed on my site. In the beginning, I have started with Tier 0 – Programming Prep. I am working on The Learn Enough Society’s tutorials. Thus far I have completed Learn Enough Command Line to Be Dangerous and am working through the Text Editor tutorial. So far, so good.

Here’s a couple funny excerpts:

Here is a great playlist of music that I have been listening to, helping me stay focused. Many of these songs come from Todd Vendituoli’s YouTube videos.

Todd Vendituoli, also known as Talv58 will soon be roasting some of the best coffee beans, in some of the best ways possible, at his soon to be, new coffee shop in Virginia. I am a bit of a coffee snob, so I will be watching this mans future and supporting him. He has vlogged all of his research in different ways of creating a great cup of coffee, here is his YouTube Channel. Check him out!

Hopefully blogging will help with my grammatical issues 😉

I had really struggled in the beginning of this journey to find the right path. I find it arduous to pick the right direction in the beginning to a long journey. Considering the infancy of blockchain development it’s not surprising that the resources are scattered about, but all things considered their is a vast range of courses, tutorials, and articles pertaining to this technology. One only has to buckle down and commit to learning the necessary information, regardless of the ennormity.

I want to share with you a few of the roadmaps I stumbled upon recently. They offer entire curriculums with completely free courses, tutorials, practise work, portfolio building, career preperation and plenty of quality reading material.

• The authoritative guide to Blockchain development – by Haseeb Qureshi. This article provided by FreeCodeCamp is thorough. It’s provides a detailed breakdown of the necessary skills of becoming a blockchain developer and not just the tech skills, but economics as well. He gives us courses, tutorials, plenty of reading materials, and videos to learn these skills. A truly great roadmap to be guided by in making sure one has the foundational skills.
• p1xt Programming Dev Guides – This guy has created some extensive developer guides, ranging from front end JavaScript to Full Stack WebDev, Python, Java, Computer Science, and a couple more. He offers full roadmaps, from noob to career hire, containing multiple courses, tutorials, tons of reading material, legit practise for the hiring process, and plenty of portfolio projects. I will be following the JavaScript 3.0 edition to prepare in front and backend in IS, and web dev with HTML, CSS, Node, Web3, React, and more. I will probably be picking other resources from his Computer Science course as well.
• The Odin Project – A full curriculum, open source, for taking someone with no coding experience to a Full Stack WebDev, with an emphasis towards Ruby on Rails. The estimated completion time to become proficient is 700 to 1000’ish hours. I will be using this as an extra resource, but I will not be using Ruby on my path. TOP is the free version, they now have created a full coding bootcamp, called Thinkful (used to be Viking).
• b9lab – An in-depth, fully mentored blockchain curriculum and certification in Ethereum. They also offer courses in Hyperledger Fabric, Sawtooth, EOS, Corda, Quorum, BC Economics, BC in Production & Supply chain Management, and BC for Descision Makers. This will be the only paid for service I will be using in the future. Their ONE subscription gives a student unlimited access for one year to nine courses, +400 hours of material, code review, one-on-one support, portfolio building, and interview preperation. Their curriculum is challenging, making the student better prepared, and creating a reputable and exclusive certification that actually means something to an employer. At the end of the day I want to be able to prove my abilities to an employer and be able to offer worth.

I will be supplementing these curriculums with each other, along with links that I have posted on the Resource page. Their’s plenty of material online for free that can get us to where we want to go. The arduous part is finding the entirety and putting it together efficiently. Then throw in a lot of time and effort and I think we can get there.

I will begin this journey full-time in about 3 months. I have a solid grasp of many of the aspects of blockchain already and a basic knowledge of an array of coding languages (beginner level). I have completed math classes up to Calc. 2, micro andhave built and played with computers since I was 10, and completed a few years in a computer engineering degree before getting side-tracked.

My Goal is to offer resources for those going through a similar challenge, to lighten the load a bit for others, to help give direction perhaps, and inspiration – to show others this enormous task can be done. I will become a multi-stack developer within 18 months.

Naval Ravikant said in a recent interview: the key to success is to give society things that it wants, but doesn’t know how to get on its own. You can’t go to school for such things; if you could, the world would already have a steady supply of it.

Thanks for joining me!

This site will be a log and diary for all the resources, courses, tutorials, and articles that I read and learn from in my road to becoming a Full Stack developer, focusing on Blockchain. Many areas surrounding this new technology will be covered and my interests that pertain. Hopefully others can benefit from my journey. Feel free to contact me concerning any questions. I am currently looking for a software development mentor!

THE MAN IN THE ARENA
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosovelt

Excerpt from the speech “Citizenship In A Republic”, delivered at the Sorbonne, in Paris, France on 23 April, 1910