Level 61
Besides doing those small apps like TODO MVC and similar, I would build something I'm very interested in so I do not loose focus and energy.
Oct 7, 2020
2
Level 2
First job struggle
Hey guys! I might sound selfish and maybe stupid for posting here, but this is the closest php community I have access to and I feel comfortable speaking here. What would you do if you were looking for your first job and what suggestions would you give me? What are some must do's in your opinion? p.s. I'm 20 and I'm in a foreign country and they require their mother language for 99% of jobs and Danish is not very easy.
I don't know to what extent my projects qualify as experience, but I have been programming for 5 years (Unity C#, Python scraping checking automating tasks, C++ for algorithms and data types and JS for the front-end) now and I just started Web Development this year, in March. What I've managed since then is to make an e-commerce website from scratch with Laravel 6, with orders, sizes, colors, favourites, products (images, descriptions, etc.) and right now I am building a whole system for my university's library (ordering books, getting in queues, admin interface, user interface, etc.) which will most likely not go into use, but I am building it mostly for myself and to have a little extra side projects on my resume.
Level 15
The job I have now is my first proper developers job, the work I did before that was freelance and rather unstructured. If I could go and talk to past me, I would suggest making some small opensource projects to have as a demostration of my skills and then put them up as public repos on github. I think having experience of managing an open source package is really useful.
The other bit of advice I would give myself it to contribute to open source projects where possible. Find a repo with some issues, and then try to solve the issue and make a pull request, even if its just updating documentation. I remember my first PR, it was on a Spatie repo and the feeling of it getting merged was immense, felt really pleased to have contributed to the community. Doing this also helps you get to grips with working in a team on the same codebase.
One last thing, don't lose faith, I was rejected from many roles before landing this one. All it takes is one person to see the potential in you and open that door for you. It took me a while to get where I am, but I am here now and look forward to going to work every day.
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