Where to grow further, what to study? How to find a team?

Question

Career in IT

Всем привет. Нужен дружеский совет и ваши рекомендации.
Если говорить коротко о себе, то я frontent-developer. Больше восьми лет работаю один, разрабатывая сайты с нуля, выполняя фриланс-заказы и всякие задачи различной сложности, от подключения хостинга и домена, работы с админкой, до прорисовки иллюстраций для сайта в paint.net (с фш работал давно, сейчас в нем нет необходимости). В общем, можно сказать, что собираю сайты полностью, от back до front. Сайты на html, joomla, wp. К сожалению, до сих пор не нашел друзей-разработчиков, с которыми можно посоветоваться или спросить "а как правильно?". Все решения ищу в сети или "вытаскиваю" их из головы. В целом, уже не джуниор, но и до синьора еще далеко)
Сейчас ушел в офис, работаю в крупной компании веб-дизайнером, она направлена на промышленность. Т.е. работаю не в дизайн-студии или штамповальне лендингов, хотя здесь круто. Но, опять же, работаю один. Разрабатываю сайты с нуля, делаю редизайны и прочее. Короче, осовремениваю сайты компании. Работаю я не плохо, владею стаком css + html + js(уровень средний) + немного владею svg и canvas, все больше углубляюсь в js, но только при столкновении с новыми задачами или почитывая форумы типа javascript.ru. Есть даже несколько проектов, которые получили признание в сети, вроде box-shadows.css и вот такой фиговинки. Работаю с GitHub'ом, но насколько хорошо, сам тоже оценить не могу. Не было командной работы. Сталкивался с sass/scss, npm и node.js, но полноценно с ними работать тоже не приходилось. Подключить пакет npm к проекту вообще не получилось)) С консолькой тоже редко работаю. На уровне открытия cmd or notepad))) Собственно, в этом и вопрос. Мне кажется, что я останавливаюсь в развитии как разработчик. Я все чаще вижу, что "крутые" разработчики при создании сайтов используют node, gulp, angular, vue и прочие программы/языки программирования. Также, для создания сайтов многие используют PDF макеты. Я их никогда не использовал, справлялся своими силами, так сказать, по старинке. Вот как мне понимать тот факт, что я решаю задачи без этих программ? Я жестко отстаю, или просто хватает моих знаний/способностей для решения задач? А куда идти дальше? У меня сейчас есть время выбрать дальнейшее направление, поэтому, нужен ваш совет. Может податься в мобильную разработку? Может быть документацию посоветуете почитать какую. Всем заранее спасибо.

Answer 1

I've been working for over eight years.

This is very small, just a fuck-up, what a small stack for an 8 year old. Quit wp, joomla for at least a few days a month, otherwise you will stay where you were.
obviously. And while you care about it, and this is already an excellent sign of the presence of a brain, and hence the ability to turn the tide. So while you care about it - run away from wp and joomla. In fact, for a landing page, pulling such monsters is generally stupid.
I haven't seen so many in 15 years. PDF is a convenient format, but I have not seen it. What is the difficulty with them? They open perfectly in photoshop.
You learned to do simple things and didn't go any further. A lot of people do that. If there is enough money, then why? As the saying goes, "to each his own". I can't do this, I have to figure everything out. But among my friends there are a lot of people. who quietly works at a studio with wp, gets 20k a month and is happy in his own way.
Meaning? It seems to me that you just need to understand that as long as you know exactly as much as a 9th grader can learn in a year, you are worth exactly as much as a 9th grader. Do you want dough? Know more. Want even more? Know even more. At least 2 hours a day for training and everything will be super in a couple of years.

Answer 2

Judging by the description of your career progression and projects on github, you are doing pretty well. Progress will go much faster if you get into the team and meet your guru there.
You don't see the value in node/gulp/angular/vue and in the console yet because you haven't dealt with large projects and haven't worked in a team. All these technologies are revealed in full force in such conditions.
Those developers who are called "cool" are the guys who are able to accurately notice patterned / repetitive behaviors or structures and respond appropriately to them. In order to be like those very cool guys, you can read The Pragmatic Programmer and Clean Coder.

Answer 3

The first thing that comes to mind is that you are too universal in your approach to tasks. You do not have to do design, layout, stretching and write scripts. Ideally, these are three different specialists, and you are trying to do everything alone. Not a single professional team will appreciate this, in a good team there is always a division into specializations, everyone does their job and does it efficiently. Interacting with the team, everyone comes up with fresh ideas, there are testers who can close the site to the end.
Do you want to make mobile apps?
My advice to you, if you want to find a professional team - forget about the independent development of a turnkey website. If you are forced to make turnkey websites at work, leave and look for a normal job.

Answer 4

Hello) I understand that there is no in-depth knowledge in programming and the path you are following is not even defined?
I have a question: if you position yourself as a front-end, then why: "I work in a large company as a web designer." Someone can argue, but now it's not the year 2000, when it was possible to combine design, programming and promotion. These are already several different full-fledged areas. If you can in design, then maybe it's worth going into this area? A man-orchestra is now needed only by those who do not want quality, but want economy. It is unlikely that there will be growth prospects in such a place.
If programming is still interesting, then as an option, study what is now in demand on the market. For example, angular, react, vue, read what they are, choose one of them and study (I would advise vue, it's quite understandable and the documentation is normal). Come up with a task for yourself, complete it and put it on github, where you can already see your code and say something.
If you figured out WP and Joomla, then maybe you should abandon them and look towards frameworks? Symphony or Laravel. Possibly Bitrix. An important and pleasant bonus will be a good payment).
Well, if your brain is not torn from the current task, then you are not growing)

Answer 5

At the age of 14-15, I found myself in a similar situation. The frontend made a huge leap forward, and my frontend skills, which were quite enough before, turned out to be so-so. At that time, my total experience in IT exceeded 20 years. It would seem that the situation is generally seams.
First of all, I conducted a large-scale study of what is generally happening in the modern front-end, what stacks / technologies are in trend, where the front-end locomotive is moving in general. Several projects added fuel to the fire, where there were forms with complex logic for a lot of fields. One had 60+ fields, the other 300+. Of course, I solved these tasks, and everything even worked, but it was not very easy for me and I don’t really envy the one who would have to redo these forms later (and the reality is that the code has to be finalized over time without options) ...
In general, the questions "How to be?", "What to do?", "Where to go next?" sharply arose.
It became quite obvious that without JavaScript / ES6 + absolutely nothing, so I began to eliminate all the white spots that I had at that time regarding the language. To be honest, until 2015, I frankly disliked JS, but put up with it. Looking ahead, I will say that now this is my main language and I am a fan of it.
The easiest way to bring a language to the level of reflexes is to code very, very much. It’s just that I haven’t been interested in coding for a long time, so I discovered codewars and began to solve all the puzzles there in a row. After a couple of months, my brain reconfigured from puff to JS and the process went uphill.
Then I chose React for myself, I won’t describe all the logic of choice, who are interested, you can read my other answers on the toaster.
As a result, I watched several hundred hours of video, mostly in English (if there are difficulties with it, then my condolences). Reviewed someone else's code in tons and slowly began to write it myself.
It suddenly turned out that when you talk about something to someone, you yourself begin to understand better. In the language and the stack in general, there are a number of not very interesting things that are not fun to learn just like that. Therefore, I went to various online development schools as a mentor, telling the basics to young and green people. They ask very different questions, and it is very inconvenient to face them in the dirt, you have to comply. :) Thus, I not only learned some garbage, of little use in everyday coding, but also earned some money from it.
After a while, I realized that I would develop much faster as a developer if I got into the right team. Began to pass social services. The first ten social security services I hopelessly failed, which was expected. From each failed social security, I took out some experience and a plan for what else I need to master / improve. As a result, after a while, I began to succeed.
Knowing English well enough to be able to read/understand by ear helps me a lot. Well-developed skills in data structures and algorithms also make life easier. Having these skills in my luggage, I just had to learn the language, master additional tools like npm / node, webpack, master the framework, and now I’m already quite a sought-after specialist.
First of all, I would still recommend downloading the algorithms, because. without it, no language / framework will save.
Well, go to social services regularly, not with the goal of passing, but with the goal of getting feedback and outlining a plan for further development.

Answer 6

"How to find a team?" Come up with a project, start implementing it, and like-minded people should be found, i.e. you need to find yourself first .. How easy it is to give advice to others))

Answer 7

You yourself understand...
In a large company specializing in IT.
So that there are many of your colleagues around.
You look, there will be experienced ones too ...

Answer 8

You have here https://github.com/Madeas/wp-theme-bootstrap-4
the file is called function.php - is that a typo?))
According to the Code, it seems like this - functions.php

Answer 9

Interesting. 8 years! I've been in web development full-time for a year. Before that, I read it, but I was engaged in administration. During the year, skills were gained to one degree or another: Yii2, Vue.js, layout (bootstrap, vuetify, css of course, html5), a little Node.js. Figured out WP and some ModX (no xPDO). There was an attempt in Go, but there was not enough time and patience.
I've been finalizing the last weeks and I'm going to try my luck in Android, because I don't like being fullstack. I want a front, but they don’t give it)
For me, I need to read more, try to do something. And, while it's interesting, the questions "what to do next?" should not occur.
"There are many things in the world, friend Horatio, that our wise men never dreamed of"