I’ve spent some time validating my plan to become an entry-level back end developer with two experienced developers at work, Craig and Martins.They both agreed the path I plan to follow makes perfect sense.

To be clear, this is my plan:

  1. Finish my web app

  2. Ship my command line app as a RubyGem

  3. Build a Rails blog MacKenzie Child

  4. Build a CMS for the above Rails blog

  5. Build Pinterest in Rails

  6. Build a Rails eCommerce

Martins offered a lot of help in breaking down one of my projects into a few smaller projects. Craig agreed the plan of action made a lot of sense, and thought it was paced well. Talking to him gave me confidence that I can do this. He didn’t indicate this would be a problem for me to do in the time I am giving myself.

I’ve told these guys that I want to finish this by the end of the year. My team target is to finish by the end of November at the very latest. That is around the six month mark, if we take all time messing about before now to be a hobby, and from May onwards as developing a career skillset.

Of course, I’ll be following the steps I’ve laid out in my book. I’ve taken time to research the domain, and mapped out a roadmap. I’ve then spoken to experts to validate my goals and my plan to reach it. My next step is to ensure I have the materials needed.

I’ve got:

  • The main Ruby books I need
  • The RSpec book
  • Required web tutorials bookmarked

I need to buy

I need to build everything I do at least twice, but probably three times. I’ll build once from the tutorial, with notes, once from my notes, and then the third time would be on my own as much as possible.

Next steps

I need to:

  1. Publish my Jekyll site
  2. Publish the last few journal entries as blog posts
  3. Write a few posts describing my motivations and what I’ve done so far
  4. Finish Pommy and publish as RubyGem
  5. Add partners and emailing to Accountables and mark as V.1

I’ll have to do all of this in April to reach my goal. 1 - 5 can be done between Friday night to Monday morning, but I’ll likely have to chip away at #5 over the course of next week, So I can start Rails tutorials at the weekend (from 1st May).

I will look to take my two weeks off work for end of semester project in October or November to smash through and finish everything, polish everything and ensure everything is published and working.