Programming

17168 readers

371 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

104

I need help getting back into development (lemmy.sdf.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A little background: Through my teens in the 90's I did a lot of the things you may expect. I was a script kiddie on mIRC, made a tank game in Unreal Engine, and did some Quake modding. From 2002-2004 I landed a job doing Java web dev, SQL, and overall database administration because my father's friend needed someone that could do that. I was ok at the job, but not great. Being young, my hobby that turned into a 9-5 made me want to stab my eyes out and I quit.

With that said, I can understand a lot of what's going on, but it doesn't "click" anymore. I spent 20 years as a career machinist, but I physically can't do that anymore. Here's the rub - my twin brother is a brittle diabetic and can't work (lots of other stuff going on as well), and our mother is getting old (father passed this year). The only reasonable way forward that I can see in order to be able to support my brother is trying to get back into development.

When I stopped, subversion was what we used. I'm trying to understand Git, but it's a giant conceptual leap. I guess, what I'd like to hear from you all is a way to jump back in as quickly as possible in such a way that it may be a career.

Thanks

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] fart_pickle 3 points 1 month ago

If it's a motivation issue, you will need to figure it out on your own. I could give you some advice but motivation depends on a specific use case. If you want I can share what motivates me but there's no guarantee it will work for you.

As for getting back on a tech horse, there's a trick I've been using every time I was learning a new thing and it worked every single time. I start with a project idea. I write down the major goals I want to achieve and start working on it. At first I do the "quick start" adjusted to fit my project. It usually ends up with a working proof of concept and a list of things I don't know/understand. Next, I learn about the those unknowns and update the project with what I have learned. This raises more unknowns which leads to more things to learn about. After few iterations, when I'm happy about the project, I start a new, more complex project. And so on.