(05:10) I asked Stephen to treat me like a real junior developer working at a company. We implemented a project management tool called Jira. We used Jira to compartmentalize the entire project and write the requirements of exactly what I'd be building. This taught me how to estimate my work and plan how to build an entire web app from zero to launch. (05:29) We also set the project up on GitHub, which is a version control application. This taught me how to develop different branches for when I was working on certain features, and I could learn how to control different versions of the code. Most tech companies use some version of the two applications because being a developer isn't just about knowing how to code.

(05:48) It's about knowing how to work collaboratively with other people as well. Stephen grilled me on our pair of programming sessions. He was very strict about me keeping the deadlines and the estimates that I originally wrote out for myself. He would constantly question why I was doing what I was doing. (06:01) And he even taught me the concept of DRY, just Don't Repeat Yourself, or essentially just making reusable code. I had to learn how to build by Googling for answers and using sites like Stack Overflow. And he would leave me a lot of comments on things that I needed to change. So I learned how to debug my code on my own.

(06:18) This made me feel like I was a real developer. at this time, I supplemented my learning journey with Udemy courses on React and Node because these were the two frameworks that I chose to build my Pinterest clone. As a result of building my first full stack project, I ended up learning how to do things like how to design a database, build APIs, set up Auth, and eventually push the app to a cloud server. (06:40) These are all things I would have never learned by just doing tutorials. And in around two months, I finished my first full-stack web app. I remember when I finished the app, I felt like a real programmer. That's when reality set in and I realized I'm still broke. I haven't made a single penny in over a couple of months, and I still needed to find a job.

(07:00) It was time to see if everything that I learned was actually worth anything. First, I defined the job that I wanted. I wanted to be remote. And most importantly, I wanted to work for a small to medium sized company, because I hate working in a corporate environment. I found all the jobs that fit my parameters on sites like weworkremotly.com and remoteok. (07:20) io And instead of just applying to these jobs, I found the contact information of the hiring managers and developers who worked at the company, and I messaged them to introduce myself. I explained exactly what I had learned up until this point,what I was looking for. I even included the link to my GitHub so they could see the projects that I had built.