Back to Basics

Apr 16, 2018 · Robert

I always thought Impostor Syndrome was bullshit.

Then I realized I was 6 months in to running WP Dispensary full time and I had no idea what I was doing.

Recently, I’ve been working on WPD v2.0 and have pushed myself to do things with code that I haven’t before.

This lead me to question my whole entire existence, as both a developer and a human being.

Seriously.

It’s taken some getting used to, but I have come to grips with the impostor syndrome within.

I’ve also realized what I need to do in order to make sure that I never feel this uncomfortable again.

Getting back to the basics

It’s been over a dozen years since I started editing WordPress themes, learning PHP in the process.

The “learning on the job” has got me here, and I’m thankful for it.

But I’ve grown so much as a developer over the last couple of years that I feel like I’m doing myself a disservice by not going back and re-learning the basics of PHP and other languages I write in.

Sure, I’ve learned a lot of PHP over the years, along with a handful of other languages, but the learning has been fractured at best.

I’ve never taken a course, read any developer-related books, or done much more than Google searches, skimming blog posts and hacking together code until it worked.

I really feel like I’m missing out on my full potential as a developer by not learning the basics of  the languages I write in.

So, what am I gonna do about it?

For starters, I’m writing this blog post and making a public declaration that I’m actually going to do something about it ?

While I continue working on the release of WP Dispensary v2.0 (which is less than a week away as I type this), I will continue “learning on the job”.

I will also be taking the PHP course at Codecademy.

Over 900 thousand others have taken the course, and it says it’s only about 4 hours from start to finish, so I feel like it’ll give me a solid – and quick – overview of PHP.

This video also gives a nice, brief run down of PHP, so I plan on watching this a couple of times while working on projects.

Because I want to continue making WP Dispensary better, and offering full Gutenberg support when WordPress switches editors, I plan on also learning JavaScript basics.

One of the first things I’ll be doing is watching this video, which has over 1 million views and packs a lot of the basics of JavaScript into such a short video.

I’ve also been looking into a couple of courses, like the JavaScript for WordPress course from Zac Gordon.

This is really going to be a life long journey, but I’m really happy to be jumping off the edge at this point in my life and (hopefully) learning to fly on the way down ?