Getting ready for planet CODE

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With the end of TeachForIndia Fellowship around the corner, I am contemplating on jumping into the programming world. So here is a checklist of things that I am going to put up in place and document it along the way.

Get a decent mail ID

Though not strictly related to planet code, I wanted to have a decent email id. The one I used aruntheguy at gmail was created when I was 15 and not so professional. Hence I have moved the mail to arunmozhi.in.

Creating a online presence

These days online presence is mostly Social Media. I deleted my Facebook account and have only Twitter, but that alone isn’t sufficient.

So,

  • Moved blog from static-site Pelican back to wordpress for easy theming and maintanence
  • Created a home page where I can showcase stuff

Customer Research

Making use of a skillset is all about selling it. So what do the buyers look for? Being a follower of Coding Horror I started of with his post on How to hire a programmer.

Here are the things I learnt:

  1. Know to really write a program – I pass
  2. Should have a portfolio – Need to create a portfolio page
  3. Be culturally fit for the role – Depends on the company
  4. Answer computer science theoritical/tricky/nerdy qustions – Well you can’t really prepare for them, can you? May be the theory part, but again when was the last time I thought about hash tables, 3rd year of my college?
  5. Expect an audition project or a real world problem to solve.
  6. Pitch in front of small group – have mixed feelings about this. But good to know this might be coming.

1 is done, 2 requires some work, 3 can’t really be worked on, 4 is subjective on how we look at it, solving puzzles and learning nerdy jokes is not the point, it shows the recruiter how we approach a problem and how much passionate about programming is a person. I will leave them at that. Finally, the points 5 and 6 are subjective to personal preference and circumstances as outlined in the comments by various people. I am sort of going to forget them for now.

Product preparation

I am the product, in case you are wondering. The article cited above and others linked in that article give a general idea about the product.
With that in mind, and my long time personal goals, here is the list of things I have in mind to do:

  1. Learn touch-typing!! Yeah, I am a pecker – albeit a fast one. – Done
  2. Learn Vim to the extent I am not going into v mode everytime to delete a set of words. – Ever learning
  3. Get core commit rights for QGIS – its time to work on itCouldn’t fit in time.
  4. Create a Portfolio/Resume/HireMe page
  5. Learn some tools of trade:
    • Plain text manipulations – Regex
    • Shell scripting
    • Code Editor – Vim
    • Version Control – Git + Github
    • Debugging Tools
    • Unit Testing Frameworks
  6. …….

I guess I will add more to the list as I set the goals. For now this should keep me focused.