Working on real-time apps to improve coding skills and get hands on experience

People who get started with coding usually go through lots of training materials and tutorials online. Some can be in the form of articles and some can be in the form of videos or other learning materials. Well, that is a good start and most of these tutorials can get you started from the basics or fundamentals. Sometimes even an experienced developer will have something to learn from all these basic level tutorials. It can be something that they might have missed during their learning journey. But apart from all these learning, real-time working experience is very important.

Source

I have to say that whenever I tried watching videos and learning something from it, it was nice but when I started working on real projects, that is when the real learning started. I initially did the tasks in freecodecamp.org to familiarize myself but later I found that was very basic for me and to get started with advanced items, I had to complete all the basic items first. I switched to watching Youtube channels and Traversy Media is one of my favorite youtube channels. I have to admit that I learned so many things from Brad who is behind Traversy Media.

Corporate jobs expect hands-on experience

Once upon a time maybe a decade back the interviews and recruitment were happening based on the theoretical knowledge that a candidate possessed. During the interview process, the candidates were asked to write tests or solve some codes. Some companies even ask candidates to write programming code in a piece of paper. I remember my friends doing that and luckily I did not have anything of that sort. I started my career as a consultant and later moved to the development stream.

Source

Today, in most companies the expectation is a hands-on experience. For an experienced developer, the number of projects they would have completed matters and for a fresher, there should be some data explaining their community projects or their hands-on experience on something they did during their course. I agree that the candidates appearing for the interview are also competitive enough. They all come with prior experience in building some basic apps even if they are fresher. To the least, the candidates should at least be aware of all the concepts so that then it comes to real coding they can at least get the code online and complete the project having the logic right in their mind.

Internet gives an opportunity

Today everyone is living and working with an active internet connection and there are lots of opportunities available on the internet both for learning and also for hands-on experience. When I conduct interviews for my team, I also do the same. I just give them a small app/tool requirement and then a system with the internet to refer and complete the app. If they are able to do that at least by referring to the internet, that is more than enough for me because in the real-time working environment they are anyways going to work only with the internet. Of course, that will not be my only evaluation criteria for sure.

Source

One of my senior coding colleagues in my office used to tell that before 15 and 20 years back, books were the only source to learn coding and some of the books were also not affordable. He mentioned that even if office sponsors for a book, it would be a common thing and all the developers would have to take turns to have that book and learn something from it. Today the internet gives lots of opportunities to learn as well as share the knowledge. There are many community projects and freelance projects available online where people can easily gain hands-on experience. These hands-on experiences can help them grab a good full-time job. It is just that we have to utilize the opportunity that the internet provides to us.

---

If you find my article interesting, please vote, share and follow. Also, please share your thoughts in the comments section.

---