Whatever I learn the first thing I do is going meta and trying to find the best resources available (however good possible given that you are no expert). For programming languages there's usually one or two good books aimed at people who can already program that gets you up to speed (Pragmatic Programmers is a good starting point) and then there's usually a bit of idioms/patterns and the like (+testing). I usually get one book first and go from there and scribble down all the stuff I think I need on a single A4 paper.
For JS it was something like:
- Set goal: Build project X
- Good getting started book: Eloquent Javascript
- Node.js is basically the browser, can be used as a REPL, can install packages through it -> do want but only basic knowledge
- There seems to be a bunch of ways of including libraries soem aimed at front-end stuff specifically...I probably want to standardize on one...kinda confosed...ok pick Browserify scribble down that there's also Bower, Requirejs, WebPack that seem to fit the same mold somehow
- Build tools are used a bunch...Grunt/Gulp seem to be the popular options...randomly pick Grunt
-> Basic toolchain done, read book cover to cover and simultaneously build the project
-> Goto advanced materials/books (Functional Javascript)

---
I'm recently relearning French and here's what I did for that
- Set goal: Understand French news, watch Seinfeld in French
- Slightly meta: Bough "How to learn a language" book
- Materials: bunch of vocabulary cards+a box to learn, audio CD crime short story in French to test if I understand it/can roughly follow, buy Asterix comicbook in French, buy Asterix Bluray box (already own Seinfeld)
- Learn vocabulary, read through/listen to materials...write down stuff I don't know for learning
- Use Google for pronunciation
- Scribble down some French songs and do the same
- Ignore Grammar until needed
-> Only in week 2 of this but feels like I'm making excellent progress. Asterix Bluray #1 could be roughly followed, next goal is to follow it well

tl;dr:
1) I need some concrete thing to motivate me.
2) I need to organize materials and the learning process up front (usually spend 1-3 days on this).
3) It has to be fun.

I haven't built it myself but talked to team members who worked on an Arabic product. Estimate way more than you would. Depending on the framework etc. layout engines need to be rewritten or changed.
If you want to usability test (you do) that is going to be nontrivial as well depending on your access to people who use the rigth-to-left mode regularly.
Typical interaction work flows need to be rethought.
If you're not confident that encoding is a nonissue...this can be a nightmare. It's a lot better these days but even if you use mainstream languages/libraries you'll likely run into unexpected encoding issues in strange places (your testing framework for example or your database).

I've only looked briefly at odin project but it's very similar to app academy. The structure for app academy was to assign anywhere from 1 to several hours of reading a night plus any mindless tutorials like codecademy, then have 30 minutes to 2 hours of lecture followed by projects that take about 8 hours.

Some if the readings in odin project are expanded but the projects are pretty much lifted from AA

i'm pretty sure the odin guys graduated from app acad and used most of their instructions or projects

Perhaps I'm just weird. When I would get a new video game as a kid, the first thing I would do is not pop it in and start playing it, but instead get out the instruction manual and explore what made the game tick, how it worked, what options i had and what that meant.

in school, that translates to me being the person everyone directs their questions to, because I tend to have done the readings and taken the time to understand them. And yes, I'm also that annoying(?) guy that corrects the teacher's code when it inevitably doesn't work. (coding live in front of an audience is hard, I hear)

it's definitely nice going through stuff like Odin and entering some commands you don't understand and magically having a finished product, but I don't feel like I learn anything that way. :shrug:

There is no right way to self-learn. What works for you works for you, and that's all there is to it. If you can build a functioning product at some point you are doing it right.

Don't let your end-users use Apple?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbr...es-apple-macs/

Thanks.

This is what we are anticipating. Since we use a big open source framework, we are hopeful that there are public references available to do a lot of it, but are cautious that it might not be done in a way that we agree with/ want to use ourselves.

The user testing component we are assuming is going to be ~5X the amount of work of normal. Fortunately I think we have access to enough people who speak arabic it shouldn't be an issue, but will of course be above and beyond what we do normally.

We do a ton of multi-lingual translation (site we launched last week supports >13 languages) so fortunately we have a basic understanding of those elements, but the right to left aspect is going to be something completely new.

FWIW you can learn a lot from studying other developers code too.

wow. how does font rendering end up being coupled to power off?

That is pretty absurd

I posted earlier about wanting to resign with nothing lined up.

I accepted another job offer before I resigned. Some big changes coming up! From PHP to C#, from a <100 employee company to one with > 10,000, and a 25% raise + an extra week of vacation.

I learned about the job from a former colleague, who I'll be working with again. I'll be a part of a small group within the large organization that's fairly autonomous. What attracted me to the job is that it seems that they treat the devs pretty well. Oh, and maybe I'll even get to sneak in some F#.

Good riddance to PHP - I went into my current job knowing nothing about it. I picked it up quickly, but it really is a poor language.

Poor php designed by someone that just wanted to get a programming language setup and running for the web. $ signs everywhere make me sick.

don't do a lot of jquery then.

Looks like I get rubymine for free, thanks to being a student.

And also thanks to my old schools policy of never closing your email account I may never have to pay.

If you plan to use any of the code you write in JetBrains' IDE for anything of commercial value; you have to pay or you're violating the license agreement.
I believe this but am not 100% sure on it, best to send an email to their support. They're pretty fast like a day on weekdays to get back to you.

I don't plan on doing that, so no worries there.

If I end up getting a job where I need an IDE, I'm sure they'll foot the bill. I can also buy a license once I'm doing it for a living. But if I'm tinkering for funsies, I'm not dropping a hundo.

Side note, apparently the Internet forum software world really cries out for a scalable solution. There's one name and the current word appears to be that it's awful at scale.

Someone should step in and provide a better solution. Disrupt the **** out of this area!

It's weird Jetbrains doesn't have a community edition for rubymine. They have one for IntelliJ.

just a guess, but i think it has to do with the size of the communities. getting marketshare (which could later lead to enterprise contracts, and users upgrading) has a lot more value in a massive developer pool. the ruby community is (relatively) so small that it makes more sense to have a strategy of "the ones that want this will pay for it." also (related) they kind of have a monopoly in the ruby IDE market, while there's other good options for java IDEs.

Plus I can imagine lots of startups electing to use the free version over posting. And since so many ruby shops are startups, why give them the option

They do offer a pretty big discount for startups if you contact them.
https://www.jetbrains.com/shop/eform/startup

$$ in angular pisses me off to no end.

rails (for zombies) kinda makes my head spin, but it's a lot easier going through this time now i've actually spent a few days on ruby.

All the colons make a lot more sense, and I'm chaining one-line methods like I have some slight clue what i'm doing.

well don't use queryselectorall then

I wonder if they got the name, from zombie processes they had to kill; in their programming career.
Nah, probably just developers that like the cultural zombies from movies.

Looking at angel.co for other prospects... if for some reason, I fail at interview for place that I want to work and wow many rails jobs in Cali.
Surprising to see python really popular in the demand requirements for hiring.

Javascript (nodejs), java (android) and c++ are still high on the popularity charts for employment luckily.

i'm guessing the same reason 90% of indie game companies have words like 'zombie' and 'ninja' in their names

So I sent out a demo of a program as part of a job application recently. Haven't heard from them, but noticed today that someone had tried to make a connection to my server on the specific random port i was using at like 1 o'clock in the morning. Doesn't appear they were using my client, because it auto-outputs a message to the server. Also, it was from an IP address a few hundred miles from here, and I applied locally.

Very bizarre. Possibly just some ip port scanning some-such?