## Becoming a Developer
### And Finding Your Community
## Aaron Petcoff
aaronpetcoff.me
@ughitsaaron
hello@aaronpetcoff.me
## Goals
- Beat a path for newer developers
- Help experienced developers reflect
## tl;dr
Own your curiosity
and embrace community
## What's Great
- Vibrant field
- We make cool things 💅
- The **AH-HA** moment
## Challenges
- "Inner critic" 👿
- Pressure to know everything
## Inner Critic
*Hypothesis*
Program only does what we tell it to do
Errors remind us of the limitations of the human condition
(Existential crisis )
## Pressure to Know Everything
*Hypothesis*
Necessarily interdisciplinary field
We want what others have
(Eat their brains; gain knowledge )
## A Messy Combination
Loud inner critic
+
Pressure to know everything
## Consequences
- Discouragement/Burnout 👧
## Strategies
- Personal 👧
- Collective 👭
👧
- Be okay with not knowing, yet
- Experiment
- Give yourself **PRAISE**
- ∞
👭
- Request feedback
- Gain more familiarity
- Teach others
- ∞
👭
- Test
- Write docs
- Help fix bugs/triage
## Conclusions
- We're awesome 🎉👏
## Articles
"[Never Heard of It](http://alistapart.com/column/never-heard-of-it)", Lyza Danger Gardner, A List Apart, Nov. 14, 2013
"[Banishing Your Inner Critic](http://alistapart.com/article/banishing-your-inner-critic)", Denise Jacobs, A List Apart, Sep. 20, 2011
"[On Code and Community](http://www.sitepoint.com/on-code-and-community/)", Una Kravets, Sitepoint, Feb. 19, 2015
