I mostly use VS Code as a simple text editor with some of the CSV plugins. Though with JetBrains coming out with Fleet I’ve started to use that more. It doesn’t have plugin support yet so it’s not getting a lot of use.

For everything else I use whatever JetBrains IDE fits. For work, it’s mostly IntelliJ, DataGrip, PyCharm, and DataSpell. At home, it’s IntelliJ DataGrip and CLion. I guess I’ve kinda drank the JetBrains KookAid, but to me, it’s worth the subscription to the all products pack. Especially if you are a polyglot since you keep a consistent IDE experience.

I think we need to take a step back and add some context. Every company will have their own hiring process, but they are mostly the same. Where I work it goes like this.

1. A hiring manager sends a job description for an employee they want to hire
2. The recruiter will check the job description for any problems and make it public
3. Usually, a few hundred applications come in. Some are these are from bots. Others are from people applying for every open position at the company.
4. The ATS will score the application and resume by comparing it to the job description. Some will look at your social media like LinkedIn and Facebook. Mostly if you provide those links.
5. The recruiter will then start trying to find the best candidates to send to the hiring manager. They do this by looking at how the ATS scored the applicant and prescreening calls. They mostly check to make sure you are a human and that the stuff on your application is correct.
6. The recruiter then sends candidates to the hiring manager. There is no hard policy on the number of interviews the hiring manager has to do, but the goal is under 10.
7. The hiring manager does an initial interview with the candidate. Depending on the situation this is in person, over video, or a phone call.
8. If they pass the interview with the hiring manager then 2 additional group interviews are usually setup. One with stake holders and another one with peers. At this point it’s usually down to one person. These are sort of like veto interviews.
9. Once someone makes it through all this does the recruiter make the offer and start to discuss, background checks, salary, and if needed relocation and immigration sponsorship.

During this entire process the only people that are going to look at your website are the hiring manager, stake holders, and peers. That is only if they are feeling motived to do additional research on you after having looked at your application and resume. Your application and resume should have already told them that you know the technologies you listed. This means that the user is not rewarded with any additional information. What was the point of me seeing this page? As one of those people interviewing you the only thing this page actually tells me is that you know how to put words on page with a template. That template should be custom and look amazing.

Jeff Geerling’s website is a good example for content. The design isn’t something I would expect from a front end developer, which he is not.

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/ https://www.jeffgeerling.com/about

Nowhere does he have a list of icons of technologies used. You learn that he knows how to use git by the link to his GitHub profile. He doesn’t have a dedicated contact page. The only thing that is really needed is mention an email address on the about page and links to socials. It’s almost like he shows us his skills instead of telling us about them.

Do not do this, but if you are, be sure to include Excel, Word, Windows, Outlook, and TCP/IP. Adding TCP/IP lets them know you’re a real technical person.

Most automated scoring of a resume compares your resume to the job posting you’re applying for. The closer the match the higher the score. You should be tuning your resume for each job and while using the same words and phrases in the job posting.

The second column seems clunky to me. I know what everything in column 1 is for. Column 2 seems redundant or filler. For a keyword search or something like an ATS having those things mentioned is probably helpful. Though, for an ATS you should be optimizing for that separately.

Right now the About Me page doesn’t tell me anything that I won’t find out on the Resume and My Projects pages. I would get annoyed at having a wasted click for no new information, and it tells me that you’re just putting stuff on a page for filler. Maybe consider combing the About Me and Contact Me pages.

On the about me, you may want to add a portrait and some biographical information. Nothing too personal. The stuff you would like to share an icebreaker in an interview. It’s a good way to provide a conversation starter, “Hey, I saw on your page that you like kitties and hiking. I like kitties and hiking.” I had my HVAC serviced last week, and the company sent me a text with a photo of the tech and some general biographical info on it. Apparently the guy likes going to the gym and spending time with his family. I don’t know why I needed to know that, but now I do. Humans are social animals, and a lot of humans like that kind of stuff. The portrait doesn’t have to be anything professionally done. Any decent phone has a portrait mode. Just look nice and use a clean background. Don’t use the webcam on your monitor with your unmade bed in the background.

Also, this page tells me you are more of a back end person. Someone more front end would be a little more creative on the graphical design. This looks like a default template. That’s fine if that’s the message you want to convey. That’s what my stuff looks like. I mostly do data engineering and present those data in an interactive dashboard with some manipulation and filters. In that situation having a boring and generic looking dashboard is desirable. My users prefer that since they are really there for the data and controls, and anything extra would be a distraction. If you want to convey that you are more front end focused you need a less tabular layout and more visual candy.

print(f"debug: {what_the_fuck_is_this}") is a valid pattern that seasoned professionals still turn to. If you’re in a code environment that doesn’t support it, then it’s a bad code environment.

I’ve been known to print things to the console during development, but it’s like eating junk food. It’s better to get in the habit of using a logging framework. Insufficient logging has been in the OWASP Top 10 for a while so you should be logging anyway. Why not logger.debug("{what_the_fuck_is_this}") or get fancy with some different frameworks and logger.log(SUPER_LOW_LVL, "{really_what_the_fuck_is_this}")

You also get the bonus of not going back and cleaning up all the print statements afterward. All you have to do is set the running log level to INFO or something to turn all that off. There was a reason you needed to see that stuff in the first place. If you ever need to see all that stuff again the change the log level to whatever grain you need it.

Don’t worry about Linux, and don’t try to over complicate things. If you are set on going the Linux route, get a Raspberry Pi. It will give him something really flexible and cheap to experiment with later on.

Look into modded Minecraft. There is a mod called Computer Craft where you can write programs in Lua. One of the things that makes scratch so good for kids is that the results are instantly visible. This is important for kids.

https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/cc-tweaked

There are programs to control your reactor > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9fC3khXuj8

Unmodded Minecraft has Redstone where you can build logic gates.

Outside of what you already have check into a maker space or a computer club at school. Here in Atlanta there is https://www.codeninjas.com. Maybe there is something similar in your area.