A little background: Through my teens in the 90’s I did a lot of the things you may expect. I was a script kiddie on mIRC, made a tank game in Unreal Engine, and did some Quake modding. From 2002-2004 I landed a job doing Java web dev, SQL, and overall database administration because my father’s friend needed someone that could do that. I was ok at the job, but not great. Being young, my hobby that turned into a 9-5 made me want to stab my eyes out and I quit.

With that said, I can understand a lot of what’s going on, but it doesn’t “click” anymore. I spent 20 years as a career machinist, but I physically can’t do that anymore. Here’s the rub - my twin brother is a brittle diabetic and can’t work (lots of other stuff going on as well), and our mother is getting old (father passed this year). The only reasonable way forward that I can see in order to be able to support my brother is trying to get back into development.

When I stopped, subversion was what we used. I’m trying to understand Git, but it’s a giant conceptual leap. I guess, what I’d like to hear from you all is a way to jump back in as quickly as possible in such a way that it may be a career.

Thanks

  • Frittiert@feddit.org
    27·
    13 days ago

    For getting a grip in current web development, I would recommend fullstackopen.com - it’s a free online course by the University of Helsinki and starts from basically zero, and gives you a lot of insights into web dev.

    It may take some time, but it’s really worth it and an overall great course.

  • twinnie@feddit.uk
    182·
    13 days ago

    Someone will probably shoot me down for this but I actually find ChatGPT good for explaining concepts to me. Especially when I just want a high level understanding of a concept as I try to understand another one without getting too bogged down. A lot of Google results go into way too much detail.

    • Pechente@feddit.orgEnglish
      112·
      13 days ago

      It’s also great for solving issues when you’re stuck. Not because of its superior reasoning skills but it can solve beginner issues and write you a list of things to try when it doesn’t know the answer right away. It’s like a rubber duck that will talk back.

    • iLove@programming.dev
      3·
      12 days ago

      A few months back I would have said the same. Lately, however, ChatGPT very often returned very incorrect information on very basic topics. Each wrong answer erodes my trust a little bit more. Lately to a point where I consider googling first instead of asking ChatGPT

    • jaaake@lemmy.world
      1·
      12 days ago

      I’m doing this now as I learn Unity and come back to C# after a couple decades away. It’s great for helping with syntax and reminding you of libraries, also with debugging steps as you mention. I haven’t had it full on hallucinate, but it has given me suggestions that fail to do the thing I specifically asked it for. I also went down a couple rabbit holes following its suggestions to later realize there was a much simpler answer that it didn’t tell me about. All in all, I’d still highly recommend it for my situation and OPs. If you’re able to follow the logic and point out the flaws, it’s a hell of a lot faster than googling or following tutorials.

  • hades@lemm.ee
    12·
    12 days ago

    First of all, you can totally do it! The field is massive, but also full of very bad programmers, and seeing how you were able to write a coherent text of three paragraphs, that already puts you ahead of the curve. Determination and perseverance is key.

    I would suggest to play to your strengths. Java is still Java. Most of the progress since the 1990s was in the libraries and tooling, which only recently have become passable. The language itself also evolved somewhat, but there’s nothing that you won’t pick up in a couple of days of working with it.

    Start with [1], work through all the boxes that are unfamiliar to you, practice a little on a pet project, or an open source project, and you’ll land a job in no time.

    [1] https://roadmap.sh/java

    • hades@lemm.ee
      4·
      12 days ago

      Also, if you remember enjoying hacking, maybe pick that up again? There’s a massive shortage of security engineers at all times.

  • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
    11·
    12 days ago

    Just remember: imposter syndrome is real. Everything you learn exposes you to ten things you don’t yet know. Successful devs are comfortable with this reality - the job is one of constant learning. Best of luck!

  • Kache@lemm.ee
    6·
    11 days ago

    One of the best tutorials on really “grokking” git concepts, and it’s online and interactive: https://learngitbranching.js.org

    For programming, start with buildings things for yourself. Be practical, start small, and iterate, regardless if you consider the previous iteration was a success or failure. I’ve heard good things about https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ (in Python) in this regard.

  • Venat0r@lemmy.world
    6·
    12 days ago

    Just use a good GUI tool for git and Google how to do stuff with command line when needed, you’ll eventually pick it up. Chatgpt and it’s ilk can also be helpful with figuring out things when Google fails.

    • J'Pol @lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      5·
      13 days ago

      I want you to understand how surreal this particular link is for me. Video edits are my hobby, and I’ve just recently started yet another play-through of Morrowind. I get the whole “do actual projects” thing and that’s valid, but I’ve no clue where to start here. Should I finally learn C#? Is Rust the only way forward? Should I just try to catch back up on Java? I guess what I’m asking here is should I just try to find a FLOSS/OSS project and try to contribute or think of something new?

      • vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        5·
        13 days ago

        All the cool kids right now are mostly on JavaScript/type script. It’s probably a good place to get started since you’ll need it on the front end.

        I’m guessing most work on the U.S. side is react. You can probably pick up a bit of node/react native as you go for the backend and for native dev.

        Java is the new COBOL. Big corps luuuuuuuuurve it. It’s not what I would expect a single dev to use. C# is similar but smaller, if you forget unity game dev. And you should forget unity game dev.

        Rust is basically a less bad C. If you do things you used to do in C, learn rust. If not, don’t.

        Python is also still a thing. If you like it you can probably use it for most things, but if not there are other options.

      • Deckweiss@lemmy.world
        3·
        13 days ago

        You can either decide by what is currently in demand in the industry and then pick a project that you can exercise that language with or you can think of a project you’d like to do and then go by what the best language is for a given project.

        In the end, languages are just like different wrenches. First you have to learn how to use a wrench, size or features don’t matter much at this point (unless you already know that you want to become an expert with one particular wrench).

        I think starting a new project is way easier than contributing to an existing one.

  • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
    5·
    12 days ago

    I’m trying to understand Git, but it’s a giant conceptual leap.

    To start with, start with just using git locally. Don’t worry about GitHub or similar. Then git and SVN will work very similarly. The main difference is that you need to git add files with changes inside before you commit them.

    Once you’re comfortable with using it by yourself, then I suggest running something like forgejo locally to be your own code server. Then you can play and learn how the two parts work together.

    Generally, you need to give yourself a little time. You need to do the work. Be efficient…sure, but don’t try to force it to be quicker than the time you need to learn.

  • talkingpumpkin@lemmy.world
    5·
    12 days ago

    Best of luck to you!

    I’m trying to understand Git, but it’s a giant conceptual leap.

    Git is not that different from svn (I mean, the biggest hurdle is going from a shared folder to any version control system)… I’d say the main difference is that branches live in a different namespace than files (ie. you don’t have trunk/src/whatever but just src/whatever in the main branch). On top of that there’s that commit and push are two different things (and the same with fetch and checkout) and that merges are way easier than in svn (where you had to merge stuff manually).

    If you create a repo locally and clone it twice in two different directories, you can easily simulate what would happen when you and a coworker collaborate via a centralized repo (say, github) - do a few experiments and you’ll see it’s not as complicated as it seems (I’d recommend using the CLI instead of some GUI client: it’s way easier to figure things out without the overhead of learning to differentiate between git concepts and how the GUI tries to help).

  • oldfart@lemm.ee
    4·
    12 days ago

    Get a book on Spring Boot and jump back inro Java web development.

    With git, you don’t need to master it, just find some subversion to git howto and start using it. It’s half a page of text. Once you learn the basics you can learn more as you go. There are many otherwise competent programmers who don’t know git too well, I know because I support them from time to time.

  • lowleveldata@programming.dev
    4·
    13 days ago

    Did you use Spring back then? It would be a useful thing to learn. Might as well see if you like to do frontend things such as React / Vue

    • ulkesh@beehaw.orgEnglish
      2·
      12 days ago

      Yeah Spring wasn’t 1.0 until 2004. We had XML files upon XML files just to describe one single Java “Bean”. I did java programming from 2001-2002 and the again from 2011-today. Things dramatically changed (framework-wise) in that short decade I was away from it.

      I would agree, Spring Boot and Spring are very useful to learn. React, despite having its origins in Facebook and still with Meta’s hands on it, is a good web framework especially if you use it with Typescript.

    • J'Pol @lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      1·
      13 days ago

      No, we didn’t use that. I did both front end and back end in a sense. I developed the web UI for the customers and managed the PHP and SQL back end since it was purely a web interface. Yeah, yeah, I know that’s not true back end but that’s where we were at that point.

  • adr1an@programming.dev
    4·
    12 days ago

    As for git, many basic concepts (e.g. staging area) clicked for me after reading some articles that Atlassian (people behind BitBucket) wrote. Other than that, I’d recommend adamj.eu 's book “Git DX” which is on gumroad. Haven’t read it, tho. But I read his Django DX and like 90% of it was stuff I had to learn on my own, and thought: oh, how come I didn’t find this book earlier…

  • Traister101@lemmy.today
    3·
    12 days ago

    So the big important part of git is that it’s a collection of commits. A branch is just a labeled commit and each commit is a list of what changed from the parent. Rebasing (the most confusing one for people) is when you fiddle with a commit from underneath yourself. Or in even more simple terms editing a parent commit. Rebasing is extremely powerful but most useful for when you notice a bug you wrote a couple commits ago. Fixing such issues via rebase (or !fixup commits you auto squash at the end) keeps your history clean. It’s as though you never wrote the bug. The other thing you do a lot with rebasing is moving your branch up in the history cause somebody updated the remote.

    • J'Pol @lemmy.sdf.orgOP
      2·
      12 days ago

      I mean, this could be useful, but I need a much higher level of understanding. When I was a dev, all we used was basically version control. There was no concept of commit, pulls, etc. I’m having to understand this from a standpoint of no understanding whatsoever. For most devs, they’ve done this for at least a decade with Git. Git is so much more complicated than a simple version control. I understand why it’s necessary for large teams, but I still see it lke this:

      • hades@lemm.ee
        4·
        12 days ago

        You likely have a mental model of Subversion, so what I would suggest is to try to forget as much of it as possible first, as Git is very different.

        Take a tutorial that is aimed at Git beginners, e.g. [1]. This will help you start building a new mental model as well as get first practical experience.

        After that, read the official docs starting wtih the object model[2]. The reason why many people struggle to get into git, especially after using other VCS, is that it was built from the ground up, without much regard of the established conventions and terminology. Linus Torvalds once mentioned that he used his experience designing file systems when developing git.

        So the object model of git is very simple, but also not intuitive. However, once you understand it, everything will start making sense, including the xkcd you’ve linked.

        [1] https://gitimmersion.com/ [2] https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Internals-Git-Objects

        • gedhrel@lemmy.world
          2·
          12 days ago

          You’ve linked into it, but I was just going to point at the Git book: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

          It’s an afternoon’s reading; it does an excellent job of giving you the right mental model - and a crib aheet of commands to navigate it.

  • GetOffMyLan@programming.dev
    3·
    11 days ago

    Start with a git GUI application. I use git extensions on windows.

    You’ll be able to get a feel for how it all works and it actually shows you the commands it’s running.

    I also use bingai a lot when learning. The more specific your question the more likely you are to run into hallucinations and that. But for explaining basic concepts or query things that are well documented it’s really good.

    It also sources it’s answers so you can follow the link for further reading if needed.

    Just don’t trust it to generate large amounts of code.