Hello HN. Thanks in advance for the advice!<p>I am a graduate of a RoR/JS bootcamp that just ended in late November. After graduating I found (part-time) work with a local Javascript developer and now provide basic technical support for one of his larger projects, a CDN for sports videos.<p>I asked a question a week ago about technical certifications and the HN community very wisely assured me that they weren't very helpful beyond certain specific (and corporate) career tracks.<p>My question now is: what are some structured projects, assignments, or goals (beyond my own work, which I do have) that I CAN do and feel like I'm moving forward?<p>I want to keep learning and growing, I'm just not sure where to turn to next, and - beyond my one side-project - don't have many ideas of my own that need building out.
I'm in a similar boat at the moment. I've just been applying to developer positions that don't require senior and prefacing my cover letters with the fact that I am in fact very new to professional coding.<p>As for projects I had a few toy ones that I started to learn specific things, but after I felt I understood the objective the motivation kind of died. I'm now working on an app that my girlfriend wanted for her academic work.<p>Having someone who actually wants the app and can give input makes it a lot easier to keep going towards an actual finished product than when you're building it because you're supposed to build stuff. Bug your non-technical friends for what they would like to exist/be better.
Side projects that actually get shipped and are potentially HN-able (I refuse to believe you've never had a cool web app idea). Open source libraries for useful functionality for JS/Ruby/Rails. MOOCs (esp. with algorithms). Reimplementing/redesigning already existing open-source libraries (e.g. creating your own JS promises library, node.js router, Sinatra-style framework, JS templating language, etc. etc. etc.).<p>I would specifically caution against selling yourself short in job applications. Do not call yourself a "junior" software engineer. Call yourself a software engineer. Do not advertise in a cover letter that you are very new to coding. Just focus on what you've done.
Do something exciting for <i>you</i>. More than anything, employers want to see you get excited and energized about something. So if there's some really cool problem that you want to work on and you create/help maintain an open source project related to it - that's great. Or make your own app. Whatever: it doesn't really matter, it just matters that you're into it.