Today is a great Saturday morning to sip on my coffee and ponder stuff. As an aspiring web developer, the most valuable advice I’ve come across has been : “check your ego at the door.” Before the creating of this blog, I told myself repeatedly that it had to be the most web develop-y, technically complex, and physically demanding project I’d ever make. Why? Well, it’s kind of intuitive. The field of web development / related professions are becoming increasingly popular meaning competition is at an all time high. I figured I needed something amazing to blow people out of the water. There’s even competition among learning platforms for teaching web-dev. Don’t believe me? Consider this. How many online learning courses for web dev existed 3 or 5 years ago. How many are there now? If you’re in the community, you know this a huge business. Part of this leads into the over abundance information we have, which makes it kind of hard to start. Thats another blog post on its own.

The desire to create a perfect website is part of why I was never able to start one. My expectations were unrealistic and frankly unfathomable. Creating this blog was my first step in checking my ego at the door and keeping it simple(kinda). This blog would not be possible if it were not for an article on Smashing Magazine written by Barry Clark. Jekyll is a parsing engine that makes it easy to create static html files and host it on somewhere like Github Pages, which is where this blog is hosted. Only that it’s not easy. My first post goes over some of my initial frustrations with Jekyll, but it’s up now thanks to Barry’s article. As a community of self-taught individuals, the web-dev community is awesome in helping other devs getting used to this landscape. It makes self learning as little less, self.

I may have never created it without the extra hand holding. It was a vulnerable moment in feeling dumb. But it wasn’t dumb, I was just ignorant. Hopefully I can do something to help a fellow dev in the future. There is no shame in asking for help or admitting ignorance. Part of the learning process for becoming a good dev is being comfortable with being uncomfortable. The feeling that comes from not knowing something should be used as fuel for curiosity, learning and persevering. I don’t know as much as I wish I knew and that’s okay. The barrier of entry is as high as you’re willing to make it for yourself. Keep it simple and push through.