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Your First Year in Code

Your First Year in Code

A complete guide for new & aspiring developers


Course details

4.3∙3 Ratings1 review

Published
September 2019
Publisher
Isaac Lyman
Chapters
27

About the course

The goal of this book is to help you start your programming journey a year or two ahead of where we were when we started. There's a lot of how-to, a splash of career advice, and a bit of pep talk. It's a good read for Computer Science majors, dev bootcamp students, beginning devs on a self-learning path, or anyone who wants to figure out if programming is for them.

More importantly, this is stuff you won't easily find elsewhere. You won't get it in a college course or a bootcamp. It won't be in the company manual for your first job. Most software books are extremely technical; this one is different. It will apply to you regardless of what sector or programming language you want to get into. It's mostly about the squishy stuff: what happens around and outside the code. This is important because writing code is only a small part of a programmer's job—researchers have found that the average programmer only writes about 25 lines of code per day. Code is really just the beginning.

So what do programmers actually do? They go to meetings. They draw diagrams. They learn. They get stuck. They bang their heads on their desks. They help their teammates solve problems. They wade through an ocean of self-doubt. They field messages from tech recruiters. They update their resumes and negotiate for remote work options. They balance their three-month-old baby on one knee and a book about C++ on the other. They think methodically and ask questions nobody else has thought about.

These things aren't code, and in many ways they're more important than code. They're what this book is about. And it's about you: your career, your journey, all the amazing options that will open up to you as you learn to code.

Whoever you are, we're excited that you're here. We have the highest of hopes for you. And we hope you enjoy Your First Year in Code.

Author

Isaac Lyman

Isaac Lyman

Isaac is a senior software engineer with a B.A. in English. His writing, which addresses several introductory and advanced topics in software engineering, can be found on Medium, dev.to, and isaaclyman.com, and regularly draws audiences in the tens of thousands. He enjoys mentoring junior developers, spending time with his family, and reading.

Course Outline

Chapter 1: Introduction: Code is the best, code is the worst
Chapter 2: Different learning pathways into tech
Chapter 3: How (not) to learn
Chapter 4: How to code (in one chapter)
Chapter 5: Steps to better code
Chapter 6: Programming tools
Chapter 7: You are an interpreter
Chapter 8: What to learn first
Chapter 9: Learning to learn
Chapter 10: Make the most of side projects
Chapter 11: Getting your first job
Chapter 12: My first job
Chapter 13: I got my dream job. Now what?
Chapter 14: Burnout, part 1
Chapter 15: Burnout, part 2
Chapter 16: Do I fit in?
Chapter 17: Women in code
Chapter 18: What to do when you're stuck
Chapter 19: Choosing a job title
Chapter 20: The DevOps introduction I wish I had
Chapter 21: A coder's code of ethics
Chapter 22: Software development beyond the keyboard
Chapter 23: Code reviews
Chapter 24: Appendix A: A coder's vocabulary
Chapter 25: Appendix B: To make this, learn that
Chapter 26: Appendix C: Recommended reading
Chapter 27: Acknowledgements

Reviews
4.3

3 total

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Course details

4.3∙3 Ratings1 review

Published
September 2019
Publisher
Isaac Lyman
Chapters
27

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