So, I got a new job recently as a web developer. Initially, I was pretty intimidated at first. I had little experience with anything about the web. I made CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) websites back in my university days for both grades and profit but I just handled the backend and left the frontend to those who are better at it. Because of this, I was surprised that they would even consider me since it was clear from the interview I did with the two heads of the dev team that I was mostly experienced in making native applications (i.e Android) than web applications.
Most likely they just needed a few more members in the team to deal with the workload they are getting on a daily basis, regardless if they are skilled in web development or not. You see, the company I work in makes software for all kinds of companies. It has a team for web, native mobile applications and even other stuff like chatbots and VR.
Apparently, software firms like these are called vendors.
Obvious as this might be for a lot of people, I figured that the next step into becoming a better software developer is to explore things outside of my comfort zone. I love the idea of adding more things to my toolkit so I can implement more stuff in my personal projects. It was a pretty hard process to learn some things from scratch once again. I was tasked with maintaining some WordPress sites. Luckily, my previous experience with PHP made grasping how content management systems work much easier. Exploring it further, I discovered how convenient it made things for folks who just need to get a site up and running. If you needed a feature, chances are there will be a plugin that will help you do that. Don't like coding? Use something like Page Builder to click your way to a presentable website.
Yet here I am right now, still putting all kinds of HTML tags manually with each line of text like its 1995. Won't have it any other way though. Nothing compares to barebones HTML and CSS.
Work right now simply consisted of waiting for tickets and changing the content of the site based on the client's request. So, I was mostly changing logos, adding and removing images and text. Sometimes, I would need to add a new feature on to the site. The company loves to make its own WordPress plugins and clients would ask for a new feature to these plugins. One time, I was tasked to have a webpage send information to a specified email address once the user was done filling out the forms. It was a bit difficult at first but in a matter of days, I got it done and deployed.
I haven't got breakpoints to work on Atom just yet. If I did during that time, it would have saved me a lot of stress throughout the development of that.
I made a WordPress plugin as well, which was fun. All it did was implement a subscription based system into whatever site that needed it. So, all posts have a screen that they need to put their username, password and an unlock key they can use to access any content under a specific category.
I got to know the inner workings of plugin development in WordPress much better because of this. It was a foot in the door for me.
The office is just 45 minutes (sometimes less depending on the traffic) away. This was one of the major reasons why I accepted the job. It was nice change of pace from my usual commute to university where I had to ride about four vehicles just to get to class every day. Leaving an hour before class usually guaranteed that I would be late for about 15 or so minutes. Leave two hours early or bust!
Currently, I'm learning a lot of Laravel. It is making sense to me little by little. I learned CRUD and a bit how routes work but I'm looking forward to what I'll get as I go deeper into it. I just hope that my overtime hours would be two at most.
Or none at all. But in this world of shipping software products at a breakneck pace, that may be too much to ask.