JuniorLearnsToCode

After trying to do it for a few months I recently got that Top Rated badge on Upwork and I'd like to share my experience, maybe give a few tips on the subject. Hopefully this will help others avoid the few mistakes I've made. The minimum requirements to become Top Rated as a freelancer are: A current Job Success Score of 90% or higher First hire on Upwork was more than 90 days ago Maintained Rising Talent status or a Job Success Score of at least 90% for at least 13 of the last 16 weeks - to get a job success score you will need at least 5 completed jobs - takes a little time A 100% complete profile  (this will help you become Rising Talent very early on)  12-month earnings of at least $1,000 Up-to-date availability (if unavailable now, set a date estimate ) An account in good standing with no recent account holds  - this one is pretty easy  Activity on the platform - submit proposals regularly, reply to invites, etc. Requirements for A...

Sometimes when you use a certain technology a lot and it becomes a part of your regular routine, it can lose some of it's appeal for a while. I've been using WordPress a lot in the past few months and I realized that I need to have short break from it and to try out something new, something different. So since it's October I figured it would be fitting to try out the OctoberCMS! The installation itself is pretty similar to WordPress famous 5 minute install process, there are two options: via installer (which is easier) and by cloning the official repository. Before installing you should check if you meet the minimum system requirements:  PHP version 7.0 or higher PDO PHP Extension cURL PHP Extension OpenSSL PHP Extension Mbstring PHP Library ZipArchive PHP Library GD PHP Library There were two oddities that I noticed:  even thought it's made using Laravel OctoberCMS uses Twig as it's template engine instead of Blade and the second thing was the ...

Currently the new WordPress Gutenberg editor is available to as a plugin , so you can try it out.  It will be the default editor in WordPress 5.0 which should be out before the end of 2018. You can also check it out as a preview here . Gutenberg uses blocks for building a website, so if you used any existing page builders (Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi Builder, WPBakery, etc.) it will feel familiar. Another thing it's worth mentioning is that Gutenberg is built using React, it's an effort on the part of the WordPress development teams to modernize WordPress core.  However, it's not all pink roses and happy unicorns farting rainbows while running around the enchanted meadows, Gutenberg's early adoption has not been very high. Currently the plugin has an average rating of 2.5 which is relatively low, over 750 people who tried it out gave it only 1 star. A detailed talk about the WordPress Gutenberg editor Luckily for those who try Gut...

Recently I've had the opportunity to be a co-host and a speaker at the Sarajevo  OpenWeb Meetup , which I have been a member for quite a while now. Public speaking is not something I've done many times so this was a valuable experience for me.  Le me getting ready to preach After announcing the meetup and the others presenters I left my presentation for the end, because I'm incredibly polite, just like that. I spoke about my experiences while doing the #100DayOfCode challenge, about the challenge itself, what I've figured while doing it (about 240+ days of coding now) and about the mistakes I've made along the way and what I've learned from those mistakes. Das nerds  "Memes make a presentation interesting" - Aristotle More memes. And even more memes... I want to thank my home boy Adnan Kicin for the opportunity. 😊 So, if you are in Sarajevo come and join us , every last Tuesday in the month.  Thanks for readin...

I've been using Gulp as a task runner casually on a couple of projects, I wouldn't call my self an expert on it (or an expert in any other technology - yet) but I figured out how to use it to increase my productivity and automate the repetitive tasks, like code minification, image compression etc.  That being sad, I never really used Grunt.js until very recently, I had a client who got a template which had grunt files for "running" the boring tasks, I told the client that I haven't used Grunt yet, but that I did have some experience with another task runner tool -Gulp.  So basically I just looked up a few tutorials and the official Grunt documentation and was able to set it up and get it working on the client's machine over a remote desktop connection. The takeaway here, at least for me, was that the tool you are using doesn't matter as much, as long as you know one type of certain tool, using another one which does something simil...

Recently I gave my first speech at meetup for a local Free Code Camp group here in Academy 387 in  Sarajevo.  I talked about things that worked for me in getting started with freelancing on Upwork.  Free Code Camp - Sarajevo It was an interesting experience for me - doing something for the first time usually is. Originally I prepared a presentation that had 15-16 slides and I anticipated that if I talk about a minute for each slide that whole speech would be somewhere between 15 to 20 minutes long.  Presentation by Hadžiavdić Sakib on Functional Programming I asked Sakib aka Sake to go first with his presentation because I was just a bit nervous since it was my first meetup talk. He gave a really interesting overview on functional programming paradigm, with focus on Scala. Le me starting my talk on How to Get Started on Upwork All the anxiety went away as soon as I started presenting, the talk lasted a bit longer then I expected, as I kept ...

Now this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Learning from courses and following along with tutorial is fine, especially when you're just starting out, but, there comes a point when that is no longer sufficient. If you spend too long relying only on tutorials you're not only going to stagnate when it comes to improving your skill, you also risk of getting bored.  As in other fields, if you feel like it's easy and you're feeling comfortable, that's a strong indication that you're doing something wrong. Think about it It took me quite  while to figure this out, for the first year of my learning I mostly relied on online tutorials, FreeCodeCamp, Udemy courses, etc.  While I was still trying to get to know the basics learning from courses was fun and it felt secure and risk free. I really started learning when I began working on my first projects, for example, I was under impression that CSS layout was something impossible to learn but aft...