How I learned to code and got a job at the age of 19


# How I learned how to code and got a job

As you can read in the title this post will take you on the journey of me learning how to code, studying programming, and starting to work as an intern. Where I then get a job as a full-stack developer at the age of 19 years old.

The parts of this post:
- How I started out
- How I landed a job
- What I would change
- TLDR;

## How I started with programming
The first coding I can recall is when I was about 11 years old. I was fascinated by code and how it worked and I wanted to try it out. HTML & CSS was my starting point and it was a tough time learning them because there were so many new things. Creating some basic landing pages and hobby websites I started to learn it and I thought it was so much fun. From then when I was 11 years old I was quite on and off with different programming languages. I did not focus on one path and an effect of that was that I never really got into the depths of computers and programming.

By the time I was 17 I had checked out a lot of different programming languages: HTML &amp; CSS (i know it's a markup language but my 12-year-old self didn't know that), Javascript, Python, C#, C++, Lua, Java, maybe something more that I can not recall. By that time my skills were OK. I had made some full-stack applications with the Javascript stack but that wasn't enough for me, I wanted to become more advanced and become good at this. So I decided to kickstart and refresh my skills on the front end by learning React. In 10 weeks I created 10 different projects to be able to train on my skills, and I must say that I made serious progress with my skills doing these 10 projects (learn by doing works).

Some of the projects I did was:
- Tic Tac Toe
- Recipe App
- Cocktail App
- Music Player
- E-commerence frontend
- Chat application.

After learning React I began to check out React Native and made my cocktail app into a cross-platform app. When the fall came(this was in the spring and summer of 2020) I was studying my last year in school and now it was all about coding. During this education, I would say I developed as a developer not because of any new languages really or stack-specific skills. Mainly because we constantly worked in teams, we started to work with testing our software and code. I also became a Linux and VIM user during this period which is something I will never regret 😄

During this education, it is mandatory to work as an intern at a software company for at least 10 weeks. When the time came to start looking for internships there was a tough time finding anyone that would receive interns because of Covid-19. I remembered I had an acquaintance who had talked about having internships for me if I gave him a ping. And that's what I did and that's how I became an intern at the startup Assedon.

## How I landed a job as an intern

The art of landing a job as an intern is something I don't have an answer to. But I do believe that if you do some fundamental things you increase your chances of landing that job.

I recently read the richest man in Babylon and in the chapter "the luckiest man in Babylon" I read about a group of people traveling to Babylon with the hopes of becoming rich. Every one of them became slaves and had to work hard. But there were some core differences between these people. One of them had the saying that you had to make hard work become your best friend and not your enemy. What he meant by this was: a slave that works hard and is willing to work because it's his best friend will impress his master and therefore bring great fortune for the future.

(One quick remark, I know it's not even comparable to be a slave vs an intern, the point I want to make with this story is how hard work and proving you are a hard worker can bring fortune.)

I think that a lesson can be learned from this and applied to your internship or any other work for that matter. At least this is what I tried to do. Work hard and do make it your best friend. Because of this, I(and you) can prove the value we possess to the company.

The second great fundamental thing you can do is to be a nice, decent human being. Being happy, social, and interested in the company and the people working there will improve your chances of landing the job.

Combining hard work with being a nice human being will lay a great foundation for your internship transforming into full-time employment.

## What I would change

I usually think of two questions that are part of a regret I have. First I wonder where I would be if I would have acted on my entrepreneurial ideas and feelings when I was younger. Second, what would my skillset be now if I would have stayed consistent with programming and learning new techniques. With those two questions, I think you can guess what I would change.

I would try all my ideas when I was younger and try to learn as much as possible. Keeping consistent with coding would also be one of the things I would do. Probably setting up a schedule like, I'm going to spend at least 15 minutes coding or learn some new more advanced topic.

If I would have done these activities I think my skill set and experience would have been greater. Though this is what I would change if I got to be nitpicky, I'm super happy with my progress and what I've done so far in my life and there are more things to come in the future.

The End.

## TLDR;
I learned to code from a young age where I tried out a lot of different tech stacks and languages. After some time trying out different programming languages I went into it to learn and become great at it. I started to create one new project each week and had great progress. I then started to learn other topics and went to study for a year. During my studies, I had an internship at a small company called Assedon. At my internship, I followed two core principles to show myself worthy of a job: hard work and being a decent human being. Lessons from my past are I wish I had spent more time learning to code and exploring entrepreneurial ideas.

The End.


Thank you so much for reading this post means a lot to me. If you want to contact me you can reach me at elias@assedon.se I'm always up for a chat or coding project 😄


How to get started with vim for web development in 2021

# How to get started with vim(neovim) for web development in 2021
Getting started with vim can be feeling hard if all you've seen of vim is a scary old terminal editor. But fear not! When setting up your vim for success with the right plugins and color theme it will become your new best friend. 

A quick note I use [neovim](https://neovim.io/) as my "vim" editor and therefore I will show you the workflow with [neovim](https://neovim.io/) in this article.

## What is VIM?
"Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to make creating and changing any kind of text very efficient. It is included as "vi" with most UNIX systems and with Apple OS X." taken from vim.org. 

Now okay, that sounds awesome but why is it very efficient? Vim can be very efficient because of its smallness and simplicity, therefore it does not consume a significant amount of system resources as opposed to other editors.

## What is Neovim?
Neovim is a continuation and extension of Vim. Neovim comes with the good parts of vim and more. Neovim has some architectural changes that bring more stability, performance and make the code more maintainable.

### Installing Neovim
Neovim got a great wiki section regarding installing it that you can find [here](https://github.com/neovim/neovim/wiki/Installing-Neovim)

## How to install and use vim-plug for neovim.
The plugin manager I use for vim is vim-plug and therefore I will show you how to install that. There are more plugin managers you could use if you want to and feel free to find the one that suits your needs best.

### Installing vim-plug for macOS/Linux
Run the following command inside your terminal.

```bash
sh -c 'curl -fLo "${XDG_DATA_HOME:-$HOME/.local/share}"/nvim/site/autoload/plug.vim --create-dirs \
 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim'
```

### Installing vim-plug for Windows
Run the following command inside PowerShell.

```powershell
iwr -useb https://raw.githubusercontent.com/junegunn/vim-plug/master/plug.vim |`
    ni "$(@($env:XDG_DATA_HOME, $env:LOCALAPPDATA)[$null -eq $env:XDG_DATA_HOME])/nvim-data/site/autoload/plug.vim" -Force
```

### How to use vim-plug
If you want to learn more on how to use vim-plug you can check out their [tutorial](https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug/wiki/tutorial)

The basics of using vim-plug are:
1.  Begin the section with `call plug#begin()`
2.  List the plugins with `Plug` commands
3.  `call plug#end()` to update `&runtimepath` and initialize plugin system
    -   Automatically executes `filetype plugin indent on` and `syntax enable`. You can revert the settings after the call. e.g. `filetype indent off`, `syntax off`, etc.
4. Reload `~/config/nvim/init.vim` and `:PlugInstall` to install plugins.

*You can reload your init.vim while still editing it by running `:so %`*

## Selecting a color theme for neovim.
Now that we got vim-plug installed we can get some colors 🎨

I will show you how to install [gruvbox](https://github.com/morhetz/gruvbox) but here you can research and find a color scheme that suits you the best. Installing will be the same for most color schemes.

Inside the vim config add `Plug 'morhetz/gruvbox'` reload your config and run `:PlugInstall`

After that, you need to add the following to your vim config. Beware that this does not have to be inside your plug section.

```vim
syntax enable
colors gruvbox
```

An example of how it could look inside your config 👇
```vim
call plug#begin()
Plug 'morhetz/gruvbox'
call plug#end()

syntax enable
colors gruvbox
```

## Plugins to improve your developer experience
Some plugins I use daily to improve my developer experience is the following:
```vim
Plug 'nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim'
Plug 'scrooloose/nerdtree'
Plug 'itchyny/lightline.vim'
```

**[Telescope](https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim)**
Telescope is a highly extendable fuzzy finder over lists.

The following let's you use telescope with the bindings of leader key then ff, fg, fb, fh.
```vim
nnoremap <leader>ff <cmd>Telescope find_files<cr>
nnoremap <leader>fg <cmd>Telescope live_grep<cr>
nnoremap <leader>fb <cmd>Telescope buffers<cr>
nnoremap <leader>fh <cmd>Telescope help_tags<cr>
```

**[Nerdtree](https://github.com/preservim/nerdtree)**
Nerdtree is a file system explorer.

To toggle Nerdtree add the follwing to your config:
`nnoremap <C-Space> :NERDTreeToggle<CR>`
This lets your toggle nerdtree with CTRL + Space

**[Lightline](https://github.com/itchyny/lightline.vim)**
Lightline is a light and configurable statusline/tabline plugin for Vim

An example of lightline:
![example of lightline](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wiki/itchyny/lightline.vim/image/powerline.png)

## Plugins for web development
When working with web development it's nice to have the correct syntax highlighting, autocompletion and linting.  I will now show the plugins I use when working with web development(Typescript, Next.js, React, etc.).

```vim
Plug 'neoclide/coc.nvim', {'branch': 'release'}

Plug 'maxmellon/vim-jsx-pretty'
Plug 'pangloss/vim-javascript'
Plug 'leafgarland/typescript-vim'
Plug 'peitalin/vim-jsx-typescript'

Plug 'styled-components/vim-styled-components', { 'branch': 'main' }
Plug 'jparise/vim-graphql'
```

The first plugin I use is coc. Coc is a intellisense engine for VIM.  Now the rest plugins I use are providing me with the correct syntax highlighting and autocompletion.

### Improving the power of coc
Some extra small tips I have inside my config for coc is the following:
```vim
let g:coc_global_extensions = [
  \ 'coc-tsserver'
  \ ]

if isdirectory('./node_modules') && isdirectory('./node_modules/prettier')
  let g:coc_global_extensions += ['coc-prettier']
endif

if isdirectory('./node_modules') && isdirectory('./node_modules/eslint')
  let g:coc_global_extensions += ['coc-eslint']
endif
```
These make sure that coc with typescript is up to date and installed. Also, since I often use eslint and prettier in my projects I have configured coc to install the relevant coc extension for them if they're being used.

Thank you for reading this blog post! You can find more posts like this on my website: [pluppen.com](https://pluppen.com/blog)

And at last, don't forget to share your VIM config with me and show off your awesome vim environment.


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How I learned to code and got a job at the age of 19

How to get started with vim for web development in 2021