Final Thoughts

Congratulations! You've made it through a pretty intense course. It's not easy. Believe me, I know; I wrote it! It really is an accomplishment and you can feel pretty good about it. If your brain feels like mush, it's because we just opened a firehose of knowledge on it. What's hard about web development is you need to understand a wide variety of topics before you can even take your first steps forward.

You are not expected to walk away from this course with 100% proficiency in all the topics we went over. In fact many of these really only serve to give you the vocabulary to be able to Google your questions later.

My final advice for you:

  • Always ask questions
  • Google everything. Then Google it again when you forget it
  • Learn voraciously
  • Don't burn out. If you go too hard for too long, it causes all sorts of problems
  • If something interests you then learn everything you can about it! That's what keeps programming fun, learning fun stuff. Chase your interest around like a butterfly
  • Don't compare yourself to others. You have a perfect knowledge of your shortcomings and an imperfect knowledge of their accomplishments. This usually means you're underestimating yourself and overestimating others
  • Programming is a cylce of feeling like an idiot and feeling like the smartest person alive. Don't let either feeling go to your head
  • Do not underestimate the role of ethics in being in a programmer. Use your power to create for good and to make the world a better place
  • The programming world is one that recently has not been inviting to any one not a white man. If you're a white man, actively seek to make your environment inclusive to people who don't look like you. If you're not a white man, I have no advice for you but know I'm rooting for you. Seek advice from someone wiser than me. In either case, no matter who you are, we make this problem by working on it actively and working toward a better future together.

Please give this course a star on GitHub if you liked it. It helps make it more visible to others and gives it credibility. Click here and click the star in the top right. Thanks.

Finally, I asked my Twitter followers for any words of encouragement. You have seen some below, cheering you on as you went. Here is a full of list. You deserve all the praise we can give for getting here.

Thank You ❤️ ️

Some words of encouragement!