Is this the perfect time to build up your skills as a web developer? We think so!
We’ve curated a few resources and tutorials to help you learn new skills and perhaps improve old ones. We think there’s something for everyone in the development community to get stuck into.
Automated Testing
To get an overview of TDD (Test Driven Development), how it works and why it’s a good thing, check out this great introduction and examples in PHP using PHP Unit.
PHP Unit
Of course, to get the most out of the example above you’re going to need an understanding of PHP Unit, and where better to start than “Getting Started with PHP Unit”? If you’re looking for more, there’s also this introduction to PHP Unit.
Ghost Inspector
Ghost Inspector is a useful testing tool, suitable for developers and non-developers alike, which allows for automated testing of user journeys through a site and lets you build a test suite through a browser plugin.
Headless CMS
Headless CMS development is an increasingly popular choice for creating lightning fast, secure and technology agnostic websites.
To start you off, here’s a quick overview of what a headless CMS is and how it works. If you want the really quick intro, there’s a 2 minute video which explains headless CMS principles too.
There are loads of platforms to choose from. We’re using Gatsby, so here are their tutorials.
Lockdown Freebies
Ever fancied creating your own vision of reality? Then Unity real-time 3D development platform is for you! The great news is that Unity are giving away free 'premium' learning access for 3 months during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Docker
A way of quickly managing websites ensuring that all environments are consistent with one another. We've used it here for local environments and now manage client test environments on our UAT server which using Docker.
It's lightweight and uses a tiny amount of system resources, which is what makes it a great alternative to Virtual Machines. There is a great video which explains the basics of how powerful and simple docker can be to get started.
Command Line
Over the past few years a number of tasks you need to do as a developer have moved from GUI's (Graphical User Interfaces) to the command line. It's definitely a great thing to learn and have a quick play with. You can find this very basic Mac tutorial on Treehouse that will guide you through getting started and running some basic commands that are used frequently to navigate around your files and folders. If you’re on Windows, check out their new terminal here. And finally for Linux users, there’s an Ubuntu beginners guide to command line.
In my opinion the best way to learn using the command line is to get hold of a Raspberry Pi. The small cheap computer is great for learning more about the command line in a safe environment where if you break it, you can just format it and start again.
DNS
This one touches less on being a developer and more on the devops, but DNS is an important one that a lot of people (developers or not) should learn about - you use it every single day as part of your job.
Cloudflare have a great article which breaks down how it works.
Git
Most businesses use git to manage version control these days and it's something that new developers are often not familiar with.
Here’s a great introduction to using git and github for version control.
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