Panel: Charles Max Wood

Guest: Steve Edwards

This week on My JavaScript Story, Charles speaks with Steve Edwards who is a website developer and lives in Portland, OR. He is a senior developer at an international corporation called, Fluke. Today’s main topic of conversation is Drupal. Check out the episode to hear about this and much more! 

In particular, we dive pretty deep on:

1:05 – Chuck: Welcome! I appreciate your contributions with hooking me up with some people.

2:22 – Started in IT in 1995.

2:38 – Chuck: How did you get into software development?

2:46 – Steve: In high school not much courses on it. Then in college did some programming there. After college, I was supposed to get married. I was thinking finance. Never nailed down what I wanted to do. Called Bank of America in 1991 – called them. He said let me put in touch with someone. One of the things I got to put classes on “how does this system work.” I got into the banking job and realized not for me. Did realize that I do like teaching. Got software support for another bank. My banking software experience got me the job. We did interfaces – data from PC base to main systems like IBM, etc. I dealt with the source. Same time, I was a diehard racket ball player; on the board state organization. Someone organizing a website for group through Front Page. Hey do you want to take this over? Got to know Front Page. It’s painful to think about it. Same time a position opened up. I got PHP books, and created a new website for our racket ball organization. Off-time learning this. At work I used other tools for the job. That’s where I got into programming and developing. I was an analyst and wanted to program. I created a website from nothing in 2004 for a mountain bike shop. Learned a lot about PHB – and learned that I never want to build anything from scratch ever again. 2006 I start looing for a CMS and I got into some evaluations and got into Drupal. Now I got to do fulltime Drupal. Some guys left the company and got to do Drupal, also. There’s a book on basic JavaScript, and haven’t gotten into it. It’s nice because since 2009 I have been working from home. 3-4 years ago I heard about Angular and how it was used in Drupal. Weather.com – they did things with Angular. I started diving into Angular. Then a small project – worked with Travis then we started with our new ideas/projects. Then I went and took some Angular classes, and I was working on my project. I had these questions. They said that this was used for a one-time use. Okay, I had to figure it out. Travis one day asked: What are you doing? I showed him with the calendar and integrated with... Travis asked if I wanted to go to work with him. Then the past few years I have been working with Vue.js.

12:41 – Chuck: In 2006 I got into Ruby on Rails. I got into jQuery and did some backbone and progressed the same way you did. Worked with Angular and Vue. There is a lot going on there. Interesting to see how this has all progressed. At what point did you decide – JavaScript is the focus to some of these projects?

13:42 – Steve: Lightweight functions.

15:25 – Advertisement – Coder Job

16:05 – Chuck: What are you proud of with the work you’ve done?

16:20 – Steve: Article - All the different projects that it looks like for a developer – I have 5 or 6 projects that I want to get to that I haven’t had time to get to.

Steve talks about one of the projects he is working on.

17:55 – Chuck: What are you working on now?

17:59 – Steve: My company, Fluke, we have a cool setup. It has a three-legged system. In that we have all the background data, another for digital assets, and...

Steve: It’s so fast – I am trying to enhance it to make it even faster.

Another thing that I am working on is that we have a scheduling website for the fire department I am apart of. Band-Aids and glue hold it together. I am trying to work with a calendar so it can integrate – take over the data of a cell and put y stuff in there.  It would be efficient so I don’t get all these errors with this old system. It would give me grand control.

20:16 – Steve: I want to get more and more into JavaScript. The one thing that I like about my story is that you did in your spare time. That’s how I got into Google. Multiple years working up late, working with people and different modules. I got good enough (in 2009) and got good enough – it got me into the door.

21:13 – Chuck talks about his course on how to get a job.

Chuck: All you have to do to level-up is to put into the time. Working on open-source project

21:56 – Steve: Learning – find a project you want to do. What is something you want to tackle? What and how can you get it done with your tools? Stack overflow, or Slack questions. We started a new Meetup (last meeting was last month) and people do Vue on a regular basis. Slack room. That’s how I got into...

Personal experience you can help people and find

23:00 – Chuck: People want to level-up for different reasons. Whether you are trying to get better, or learn new things – getting to know people and having these conversations will shape your thinking.

23:33 – Steve: Also, networking.

24:10 – Chuck: I wasn’t happy where I was at and talked to people. Hey – what else is out there?

24:37 – Chuck: Any recommendations?

24:42 – Steve: The amount of courses that are out there, and it can be overwhelming. Find courses when they go on sale. I found some courses that were only $10.00. There is stuff that is free and things that you can pay for. It can be inexpensive.

26:38 – Chuck: I do the same thing. I wait for things to go on sale first. I’ve done that with courses. However you learn it. Some people work through a book and for others that’s not the way. Sometimes I will start with a video course then I get frustrated. It helps, though. There are different ways to do it. Go do it.

27:39 – Steve: There is a lot of good jobs – get your foot in the door as a junior guy. Getting the real-life experience.

28:15 – Chuck: How do people get ahold of you?

28:18 – Steve: Twitter, GitHub, wherever...

28:48 – Picks!

28:53 – Advertisement for Digital Ocean

Links:

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Charles

Steve Edwards