how to start coding

1. HOW TO START
(ANYTHING
ABOUT CODE)
Journey of a self taught JS Developer

2. Agenda
● Self Introduction
● Answering Q & A in Meetup.com
● Reason Not to Code

3. Agenda (cont.)
● The great language debate
● Overview of each Language
● The Learning Path
● How do you know you are employable

4. SELF
INTRODUCTION
It’s quick, I promise

5. Qualification(?)
● Mechanical Engineer Degree
● Mech. Design Engineer – 2 years
● Application (Sales) Engineer – 3 years
● Programmer – now, and hopefully forever

6. Why am I here
● Been there, done that
● Wish someone else will guide me instead of me figuring things out the hard way
● Still learning, and will probably continue to

7. MEETUP Q&A
Get the main point out first

8. Chances of getting into IT
industry without a CS Degree
● In my previous company, half of the team are non CS degree holder
● Biggest hurdle – going through HR screening.
● Most developers/ team lead don’t care about degrees

9. Where do I start
● Whole point of this meet-up
● Summary
○ Learn coding concept from scratch
○ Pick a purpose/product
○ Pick a language
○ Pick a framework that is based on your language
○ Work on portfolio

10. How long does it take for me to be good at
coding or experienced to ask for a job
● Once you have a working portfolio that can be used as a showcase of your product
● can be bare bone, as long as it demonstrates your knowledge
● Pick up the finer details once you are hired

11. Transition from UI-UX into frontend
developer.
● UI / UX designer are different things from Front End Development
● UI/UX are a conceptual idea on how a product should look / should behave, and not specific
compared to something called coding

12. A bunch of
codes/server with
repeated QA
• You cannot transition from UI/UX into a front end developer, because
they are 2 fundamentally different discipline
• Experienced Front End Developer might have a good idea on how UI/UX
implementation is, but it doesn’t mean that they are correlated.

13. How to start working on small jobs related
to coding using platforms eg fiverr?
● Never done it , to be honest, but competition is fierce and pay is meager
● You have higher chance if you go around startupMamak and approach folks that are
interested for a web developer

14. How to make the leap from theory to
practical
● Work on an actual project
○ Freelance (cheap it might be)
○ web/mobile app (that can be accessed and used outside test environment)

15. REASON NOT TO
CODE

16. You want a website
● A lot of websites nowadays come with a template based drag and drop capability that
allows creation of website yourself
● Limited, but it allows full control of websites from you without the need of a 3rd party
developer

17. WordPress

18. Wix

19. Square Space

20. You want a mobile App
● A mobile App has much more hurdle to create compared to websites
● Better off if you hire an agency/freelancer for your creation

21. You want to see result fast
● Contrary to popular belief, creating an IT Product (Websites /App/ Data scientist github)
that is commercially viable takes time

22. REASON TO CODE

23. Job Opportunity
● NST Listed Data Scientist as an emerging career
● Hays Recruiting, Randstad listed IT as an emerging career trend
● Job calls from recruiter twice a week – Personal Experience

24. Freelancing Opportunity
● Go to StartupMamak (A facebook community about startup) and KLJS long enough, you will
eventually get somebody asking for freelancers
● Nuff Said

25. Low Bar of Entry
● A Computer (doesn’t have to be a high performance one) is all you need.
● All tools available are FREE online
● Do not mistake it as easy to master. It’s not

26. JobStreet Statistic
● Statistic is taken from Job Street Salary Report
2018 for ICT Industry (Central Region)
● Senior Mgr (Min Salary 12.9k, max 18.1k)
● Manager (Min Salary 6.9k, max 9.5k)
● Senior Exec (Min Salary 4.1k, max 5.9k)
● Junior Exex (Min Salary 2.7k. Max 3.9k)

27. THE GREAT
LANGUAGE
DEBATE
JavaScript Sucks, and Java sucks too while
you are at it

28. Honestly
● It’s a waste of time to spend months of time deciding months to decide what language to
start learning.
● It’s easier to pick up another language once you master one of them
● Way easier

29. OVERVIEW OF
EACH LANGUAGE

30. C, C++
● The Language most engineers learn during college
● Mainly used for low level / machine level programming
○ Arduino (to interface with machines,board)
○ Game Engine
○ PLC and PCB control
● Not recommended to learn as freelancers

31. Java
● The language most CS graduates learn during college
● Mainly used in enterprise level for Server back end purposes
● Also used for Android App Programming (although Kotlin is taking over)
● Dominant Framework : Java Spring

32. JavaScript
● The Dominant Language of the Web
● It’s usually pointless to pick up JS alone
● Web Design Route
○ Pick up HTML, CSS
● Node Route (The BackEnd Route)
○ Express/Meteor, MongoDB/SQL
● Dominant Framework : ……

33. JAVASCRIPT
IS NOT JAVA

34. Python
● Easier to learn than Java, although it is the slowest among Java/C++ (not that it matters that
much)
● Used in Machine Learning, Data Science Field
● Also used for back end purpose – Web Scrapping, Server Automation
● Dominant Framework : Panda, Numpy, Tensor, Django

35. PHP
● Server Side Programming Language, mainly for web development/freelancer
● Used to be dominant back end language, but draws some criticism because of its language
limitation (PHP5.x)
● Some old company might still use pure php 5.x, but most switched to php 7.0
● Dominant Framework : Laravel

36. WordPress

37. Swift
● If you want to write app in MAC OSX / IOS, you don’t really have a choice
● Based on C++/C#

38. SQL
● It’s the language of Database, the dominant one
● Used for information Storing (C-R-U-D)
● Comes with a few flavor, MYSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, PostGres
● Easy to Pick Up (1 – 2days of learning) and it will impress a lot of job interviewer
● Utility

39. C#
● It’s the programming language if you want to write on Microsoft Platform (.NET)
● The .NET can be used on writing app, including web, mobile, desktop, gaming, IoT, cloud,
and microservices.

40. LEARNING PATH

41. The Web Stack
● Recommended if you want to work as a Website / Front End Programmer

42. HTML

43. CSS

44. JavaScript

45. Learn AJAX
● How to fetch data from the internet
● REST API, Http Protocol
● How to send data to the internet

46. Pick A JavaScript Framework
●ReactJS
●Angular
●VueJS

47. Pick a CSS Library
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap
● Bootstrap

48. Practical Work
● Start working on a decent mock up on
○ A to do Web App
○ A ecommerce mockup
○ A website about you
● Now with practice, you should be able to get into an entry level front end programmer work

49. The Data Science Stack
● Recommended if you want to work as a data scientist

50. Learn Python (3.x)

51. Learn Pandas

52. Learn MatPlotLib

53. Optional (?)
● Machine Learning and Trend prediction

54. Neural Analysis (?)
● KERAS (Neural Network Library)

55. Start Doing a Practical Project
● Grab a bunch of online database (Kaggle.com) and start doing Analysis on it

56. WRAP UP
It’s quick, I promise