Side Projects Q&A and Videos

I'm working on my side project. A web app.

I know a little of html and css just the basics but now I want to extend my app and make it more visually attractive and I noticed I went to Udemy to look for Modern CSS course etc.

It will take me 20+ hours just to know what to do plus the time I take doing the work.

This approach is not working for me and not gonna finish the project by the deadline I set myself.

What are your thoughts? How you learn something while applying it at the same time?

Getting More Users

Let's say I built a web app and got a dozen friends using it (a clean simple job board that removes all frustrations I face with other job boards like LinkedIn/Glassdoor/Indeed, my friends love it). How can I scale to 10k+ users?

I saw the masterclass talk about SEO for getting more installs, but I'm unclear how to get more users for my web app -- I'm personally not interested in mobile dev and I'm more interested in backend heavy projects. I saw this question but I found the responses pretty unsatisfying -

Getting more Interviews

I also noted that in Alex's talk he talks about how people contacted him on his google play email for interviews. For web apps, how can I get more interviews?

Is just telling it on the resume enough?

Would recruiters even see the bottom of the resume with projects? (I assume most recruiters skim the latest job experience and then titles)

Also what are the thresholds for "impressive" user counts? is it 50/100/1k/10k?

Would love to hear stories on how people got interviews from having websites with tons of users!

I want to get started badly with side projects. I feel like I never know how to truly get started with them, and most importantly, planning with scope. I don't know if something is ever too basic or too complicated with my knowledge. I wanted to ask, how do you all really get started with a project most importantly finish?

How can I effectively prioritize my learning as a software engineer in the early stages of my career? I often find myself shifting focus between different technologies and resources online, making it challenging to stay on track and not get overwhelmed. For instance, one day I may work on an Android project, but the next day, I get engrossed in reading a different blog, causing my focus to shift again. Any tips to maintain focus and manage the abundance of online resources to become a proficient software engineer?

Hi all,

With Google Play’s new policy requiring testing by at least 20 people for two weeks before launching an app, many of us will face a new challenge, particularly for those publishing projects for our resumes. What strategies are there for approaching this requirement, and where can we even find 20 willing testers?

I used to try several courses to learn C++ for Unreal Engine, however after I finished all of them, I even can't came up an idea to make a project which matched on personal limited skills. As a result I tried lowering my expectations by finding it the most basic one (I found CS50 - programming with Scratch) to build logical thinking skills. When I did the assignment (the assignment has specific perquisite), unfortunately it turns out I trapped into tutorial hell and I still can't came up an idea. Feeling burnout, I decided to take a break for few days because I believe good idea doesn't come from burnout. But after few days recovered I somehow came up an idea by looking past interest game and turns it into my assignment , however after did a few days, my idea didn't match my knowledge skills. (in this moment I don't know about Jointaro yet)

I understand programming is about doing and doing as this explains and also communication . But I'm struggling to find the solutions based on my current situation. A lot of advice and courses on internet are omnipresent, and the comments more or less just say "thank you for your advice" or "Great video" whatsoever (especially YouTube) . I tried some of them based on my current situation, however I realized there is no progress and I slowly doesn't have principle of life.

Sorry if my questions seems so futile for experienced software engineer. However I want to give it a shot to breakdown my own problem. If you think my situation has something off, feel free to ask so there will be no misunderstanding. Thank you for your attention.

Additional: I also find out whether I write blog or write questions, it takes me a lot of time (maybe 1 - 3 hours or could be more depending the complexity), because I try every possibilities to avoid misunderstanding or miscommunication. I believe people who smart at great university or company might not need take such hours to do so.

Hi all. I got laid off in April from Amazon. I have been looking for a job since then but I am a junior engineer and I haven't been able to get an offer. Someone at Taro suggested that I fill the gap by claiming that I was working on my own startup. This could get me to the mid-level bar.

I thought about doing some personal projects and claiming that I was trying to monetize them but failed. I am concerned that recruiters and hiring managers are going to see right through that though. Side projects are ideally done on the side of my full-time job.

What are some ways that I can fill the employment gap and get to the mid-level before I secure a full time job?

Obviously, we need good UX, but I find myself obsessing over small details.

E.g. When the loading animation shows the display flexbox is slightly smaller than when the data loads because of scroll bars added once the data comes in. This makes it a bit jarring

There are other things like messing with colors, UX, animations, transitions, spacing.

Clearly you can spend all day tweaking UX. Where do you draw the line?

Hello! Just joined this community yesterday and the information I've seen so far is invaluable! This platform truly is unique!

My question is about the overwhelming and sometimes contradicting information for front-end engineering. I was a backend engineer for 1 year and then switched to a frontend engineer within Mastercard since I love the design and visual aspect of it. It is much more gratifying. We work with Angular in mastercard but I feel like my skillset is very specific to our codebase. I am good at debugging (cause that's what most of my work is recently) but I don't know how that can transfer to other jobs. I also feel like Angular is an older framework. I want to join a proper tech company next year (outside fin-tech) as a senior front-end engineer. What do I need to do to get there?

Should I dive deep into Angular and make tons of projects with Angular? Should I learn React or some other frameworks and make projects with those? Should I look into full-stack roles and brush up on backend (Java)? All of the above??

I am a bit lost and any guidance would be appreciated!

Thank you!!

For people who work on side projects: I was wondering what is your system when it comes to coding at work and then coding after work? How do you divide your time effectively between the two?