Relevant Logic

Starting Over

I've a friend who is a developer, but he's been out of the game for a while.

He wants to get up and working in an interesting and well-paid job as quickly as reasonably possible.

Rather than just write him an email, I thought I'd put something up here so I can share it with the world.

So for anyone in this boat, do this:

1. Learn HTML 5 (at least the basics)
2. Learn Javascript
   1. Read Javascript: the Good Parts
   2. Google the rest
3. Learn Postgres and SQLite. (Don't use MySQL. It is technically inferior in essentially every way, and may have licensing issues that will bite you.)
4. Set up a Javascript server. The one everyone is using is Node.js, but I'm not terribly fond. Still, it would be a safe bet. I would suggest that you consider Rhino, which is Javascript running in the JVM. This means you can use any Java library at all from your Javascript code. Essentially, there is code available for you to use on your server to do absolutely anything you might want.
5. Read The Art of SQL, unless you're already a SQL hotshot. Heck, read it anyway, because it's the best enjoyable and readable book on a dry technical subject ever written.
6. Learn JQuery

Based on what you've learned, make a small but useful project for something that interests you. I suggested my friend do an application to keep track of his extensive wine collection and allow him to record tasting notes and pull in information from Amazon or wherever else he can find.

Then put your project up on Github (Oh: 7. learn Git).

As you start making meaningful inroads into the learning and the project, go to local user groups for Javascript and anything popular and web-related (Ruby, Python, Web Design…).

As you get into this project, particularly once you have something useful and interesting up on Github as a demo that you've useful skills, you should be beating people off with a stick unless you live in Siberia or something.

Finally, don't stop learning. Based on what where you are at this point, it will be a relatively small step to making apps for iPhone and Android devices using Phonegap and something like Sencha Touch.

You will also not go wrong learning to display data on a map and build geographical databases using Postgis.

A note about my reasoning here: I'm keeping to the smallest set of useful technologies that are enough for full-stack development. If any language is suited to that these days, it's Javascript. Wouldn't surprise me if Javascript was very popular on the back end in a few years. With SQL and Javascript in suitable incarnations, you can do the whole stack and do a darn good job of it.