Your First Year in Code: A complete guide for new & aspiring developers

by Isaac Lyman (Editor)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780578564999
Publisher:	Isaac Lyman
Publication date:	09/17/2019
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.39(d)

Table of Contents

Foreword

About the editor

About this book

Introduction: Code is the best, code is the worst

Different learning pathways into tech

How (not) to learn

How to code (in one chapter)

Steps to better code

Programming tools

You are an interpreter

What to learn first

Learning to learn

Make the most of side projects

Getting your first job

My first job

I got my dream job. Now what?

Burnout, part 1

Burnout, part 2

Do I fit in?

Women in code

What to do when you’re stuck

Choosing a job title

The DevOps introduction I wish I had

A coder’s code of ethics

Software development beyond the keyboard

Code reviews

Appendix A: A coder’s vocabulary

Appendix B: To make this, learn that

Appendix C: Recommended reading

Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

If you are in your first year of code, you're lucky to have discovered material like this. I wish I had. It's still a tremendous read years into my career.

Ben Halpern

From the Publisher