Keep Your Pandemic Academic: Dev Skills To Learn During Down Time

One of the most challenging aspects of being a developer is having to constantly evolve your game and grow your skills while living life. If you’re at a consulting company like Headstorm it can be especially challenging because our people are full-stack and our solutions are tech agnostic, anything is on the table if it’s best for our clients. How do you even find the time?

Well, sometimes the time finds you. Just like the other 7.8 billion people on the planet right now we’re all trying to do what we can to safeguard our families and grab as much normalcy as possible in this unprecedented event. With the script getting flipped from “I have no time” to “Please help me I’ve run out of Netflix content and haven’t worn pants in 3 weeks,” I thought it would be a great idea to talk to some of our engineers regarding recommended technologies to learn. I mean you’ve already Googled “Humane ways to quiet your kids with duct tape,” so let’s throw a little more content into the mix! These are just a few ideas out of the many pursuits you can have as a developer looking to add new tools to your utility belt. 

Just starting your career?

“If you’re still in school or just coming out there’s a bunch of stuff you can’t go wrong with. React, Angular, Vue for UI, NodeJS or GraphQL in the backend. API methodologies are especially important for what I do on my team. Focus on making goals/objectives that you want to reach and breaking them down into manageable pieces.”

 This is great advice from Zach Poole, one of the new graduates who joined us recently at Headstorm. When you’re just getting rolling in your development career it’s more about getting in the mode of constant learning than it is about specifics. 

Trying to make the front-end a better place?

Your application can have all kinds of rocket sauce in the back but if the UI isn’t up to snuff that magic can go unrealized. I asked Jake Oien what advice he had for devs wading into JavaScriptLand and he had this to say.

“Whatever your framework of choice is now’s the time to learn it’s newest features. Then get comfortable in another framework to expand your mind-cloud and keep your programming skills sharp.” 

As a recruiting pro I can’t agree with Jake enough. He’s one of our resident React experts and has a high comfort level there, but he can also join an Angular or Vue project because he’s not silo’ed in one specific framework. Swiss Army Jake!

What's new in .NET?

There are few enterprise companies out there making big waves like Microsoft so I grabbed James Darling who recently joined Headstorm from another consulting company for his thoughts on the state of .NET.

“Learn as much C# as possible, .NET Core CLI is especially important right now. There are lots of certs around but AZ-900 is one I’d recommend for sure. Azure is the future.”

Wise words, .NET Core is the best of Microsoft past married to the Linux, cloud-based, containerized future. The AZ-900 cert is great for Azure fundamentals and covers a breadth of important info.

Java. So many flavors...

As a developer in 2020 it’s almost more about the frameworks than the language since everything is designed to run together. Stephen Brewer, one of our Project Leaders who is just as dangerous on a keyboard as he is running teams, gave his thoughts to devs in the Java ecosystem.

“For me it's less about Java and more about Spring and SpringBoot and which web server frameworks are applicable. My learning recommendation is to build RESTful microservices using SpringBoot, Spring, and OpenJDK running in a Docker Container that connects to a relational database using Hibernate.”

Why is this a double good idea? Containers like Docker are here to stay and a lot of projects still involve relational databases so augmenting both your cloud and on premise development skills together is a win win.

Code. It's for sharing.

One of the biggest changes in enterprise development from when I started my career a million years ago is the use of Open Source software, that’s why I was really pleased when Julie Pham hit me with an awesome big picture response on how devs can best use this down time.

“Contribute to some open sources that you’ve used, have been using, and might use in the future.”

Considering Open Source software is only as strong as the community behind it this is a great suggestion that not only helps you, but other developers as well. You can be sure that whatever the next big thing is, it will come from Open Source. Commit, get that sweet coder karma. 

Data Engineering & Data Science

There are a lot of areas Headstorm excels at but building data focused products is our fastest growing pillar of excellence so I made sure to hit my Data Engineering and Data Science teams up for their input.

“Spark, Hadoop, EMR clusters, HIVE tables are all really good to know. Overall it’s just really important to know how to work with things at scale, not just small data sets.”

Straight from the mouth of Faial Alnahhas, one of our Data Engineers who certainly knows what he’s talking about when it comes to working with data at scale. Faisal’s advice for devs pursuing Data Science?

“You need production tools and models for real world clients if you’re in Data Science, not just theoretical knowledge, and this can be tough to acquire for new devs. In general: code optimization skills are super important.”

Clay Moore, one of our newest Project Leaders we hired specifically for his background in all things data says, “Data Science sampling methods are great to know too so you don't get a bunch of bogus data.”

And while tools like Tableau and Power BI are good tools for Data Analysts trying to close the gap on Data Science, Clay believes, “More curated visualization can happen in Python and R using packages like seaborn and ggplot2. I’m also a big fan of D3.JS, it’s absolutely mega!” 

The bottom line is there’s no end in sight as far as valuable skills devs can be hunkered in their bunkers with right now, and here’s some non-technical advice from myself. Pick something you’re motivated to learn, it won’t get done otherwise. If you need some fuel then grab another dev who sees value in what you’re trying to get up to speed on and attack it together. Our company motto at Headstorm is “Engineering Growth,” so by all means feel free to reach out to anyone in this article that may be able to guide you even more.

Just please…if you come up with something awesome and decide to Open Source it. Don’t give it a stupid name. When this pandemic blows over I will be absolutely furious if I have to start recruiting on MonkeyPantsDB.