Programming is a virtue

For a software developer, knowing how to navigate through the Terminal command line is very, very important. Starting out, you may think that it's not that big of a deal. But if you ignore this crucial "soft" skill for developers, it will come back to haunt you at the worst time. To give you an example, a friend of mine who was doing freelance work was in the process of migrating a software product from his local machine to a remote server. His client told him that he would have to do the entire migration through SSH (Secure shell). For those that don't know, SSH is a safe way to remote into another computer from your local machine and make changes to the remote machine. But here's the kicker, SSH requires you to access the remote machine from a terminal and use commands from the terminal. Having minimal experience with the command line, my friend struggled to do even the simplest of commands such as copying moving files, running and testing his changes, and keepi...

Learning a version control system is a crucial part of any aspiring software developer. Version control systems are used by any serious software development team to keep a secure history of changes made within their product. Today, I am going to talk about my personal favorite version control system, Git. Git is a free, open source, Distributed Version Control System and it is used in many major companies such as Amazon, Google, and Intel. To be honest, if I were in an interview panel for a software development position and the interviewee said that they didn't use a version control system or didn't seem to have an interest in a certain version control system either way, I would almost immediately say that we should not hire that person. Knowing a version control system is that crucial . Showing that you have used version control shows that you've worked on projects by yourself or on a collaborative team and that you are mindful of changes and keeping your code well orga...

I want to talk about a tool that I use to reenforce programming concepts that I have learned. Enki , is the best app to use on a daily basis to embed programming syntax and concepts into your brain. And the best part is, it's free and it only takes about 10 minutes every day! Enki has mini modules to give you information about a particular topic and then give you a question to help you see if you understand how to use that knowledge. The topics that they provide include: Web Development, Python, Javascript Java, SQL, Linux, Computer Science topics, Git, and Computer Security.  My advice to get the most out of this app is to pick at most three topics at a time to try and master. The app allows you to pick what skill level you believe to be in the particular area that you have chosen and build from there. The app also allows you to switch levels at anytime so if you thought that you were an expert in Java but then feel overwhelmed about the questions thrown at you, you are abl...