Newbie coder @ 50

 To everyone I can reach through this route. A Merry Christmas and a prosperous, healthy and beautiful 2021. As of today I will start again with my old career as well as my new career as a mobile app developer. Hopefully with this year a prospect of ending the old career and a full-time new career. But I wish for each of you twice what I expect for myself. Thank you for the time you take to read my articles, im very greatfull. I'll see you in the next post. Do, believe and be Happy Stefaan

 Hey everyone, Indeed, it has been a while since my last article, here in my Blog. The last 2 weeks I have done almost nothing other than studying. Back to the basics I had already done once. But now I have started studying purposefully. There is so much information available and it is all so interesting. But I carried a lot of information that is actually irrelevant. In order to be able to study in a more structured way, I split my studies into two groups. I read what is interesting but not directly relevant and I save it in a kind of information folder. And every article gets a tag from me. The tag tells me what it is about and where I could possibly use this information. But this group is not ready knowledge. The second group is knowledge that can be used immediately. How do I know what will end up in this group? You can read that below. To be able to lead the study you need a goal. Otherwise you don't really know what to study first, and which subjects to follow. The only way t...

Hey everyone. For the readers wondering where my next post with code goes. Well here is the answer. From scratch I studied Dart this week. I bought a few basic Dart courses. I had certain questions that I had been asking for a while. And I thought let's start from scratch again. A stiff neck I can say from experience that even after a certain time it is good to repeat the basics. And that not only in programming, but generally in life. It puts our feet back on the ground. My father said, " whoever looks at the tops of the trees every day will get a stiff neck." And that is actually saying in a playful way. If you forget to look at the basics, it is painful to look at the basics in the long run. In life, it is also important to keep in touch with the basics on a regular basis. For example in a relationship. Check deep inside why you fell in love with your partner. Or take a look back at why you made a certain good choice in life and not just the bad ones. This is also imp...

I would like to give an important tip to all newbies like me. Maybe you ask yourself how can Stefaan give a tip while he is still so new to programming. Well, it comes from the little experience I have gained in the last year. And the many years of experience as an analyst in a think tank. I am a sole proprietor. I am alone. I don't have any colleagues where I can talk to while writing code. So I am my colleague and so I have to consult with myself. And believe me I don't often get my right hahahaha. I've found that by documenting my code, in this case my Blogpost articles, I often find the solution to a problem. And this in my own writings. Time and again, my solutions have partly come from my texts. Of course not the full syntax, but certainly a reference to documentation that I could consult. By writing down what I do. And especially writing down my problems sometimes clarifies the mistakes of my own thinking process. Rereading and rewriting my articles sometimes let the...

Learning to code can best be compared to puzzling. It's like a puzzle with thousands of pieces. Obvious pieces As with most puzzles, you start with the most obvious pieces. The four corners and the contours. That's the most common thing with Flutter, and that's building the UI. You will find hundreds of videos of it. So that's a start. The next row of puzzle pieces is not too bad, if the photo on the puzzle is colorful and varied. But that is precisely where the problem comes with Flutter. There are several different puzzle pieces that can occupy a certain place. Well now it is getting a bit more difficult. But there are also videos of that. But don't worry, after careful weighing and isolating the puzzle pieces, we will get there. So also with Flutter when I build the UI. Put these puzzle pieces aside But the closer we get to the core of the puzzle, the less variation of colors in the puzzle picture. So it gets a bit more difficult. Also because, again, different p...

In between, a state of affairs regarding my emotions during my quest. The last programming sessions were tough. Full of problems and no solutions in sight. And then there are moments of loneliness. Loneliness because you do not immediately have someone in the area to discuss with. A discussion that you have with yourself because the people in your neighborhood do not understand what you stand for. And of course out of a certain pride you do not want to immediately inform social media about the problem. Especially because you doubt yourself for lack of knowledge. It is deep water that you have to pass through. In my case, I am now in a certain career, where stability reigns. An exemplary function even. If I want, I can perform the same job until my retirement. With complete job security and security of income and standing. And yet I am fighting for a new career, full of insecurities, problems and new things. It will certainly not be easier for me as an entrepreneur in a crowded market. ...

what I want to achieve  How did I start writing code?  The most important thing I actually kept in mind was what I want to achieve.  What do I want to write a mobile app for?  What should that app be able to do?  And what will that app look like. analyzed every line of code and added comments  On YouTube I started looking for videos where apps are programmed, which were in line with what I want to achieve with my own app.  And then I simply started typing the code into my editor.  But I analyzed every line of code and added comments.  And since I chose Flutter, I also looked up every widget used in the flutter documentation.  If this documentation was not enough, I searched YouTube for all possible videos about this widget.  The widget with all its properties. style and systems  In this way I have also noticed that there are several roads leading to Rome and Paris.  And that every programmer has his own style and systems. ...

Flutter never heard of it So in my search for information to write my first app in Android, and therefore study Kotlin thoroughly, I regularly stumble across the word “Flutter”.  Weird, most things sound familiar to me.  Assembler, C, C ++, Java, Turbo Pascal, Visual basics, C #, COBOL, etc..  But Flutter never heard of it.  Also in my circle of friends there was nobody who knew Dart or Flutter. As befits a good technician, I want to know all about this. A framework that runs on a programming language Dart.  A tool to write both Android and IOS apps.  Are you kidding me?  No way!  My target audience in my business plan would suddenly go from 73% to 99%.  That is an extension of my client horizon by 20% before I have written 1 line of code.  Am I not a great businessman? 1 language and 1 framework Now I was completely curious.  Yes of course, my first plan was to study at least 4 programming languages, and this would now be reduced t...

The decision has been made  and I am going for a career as an SE, what now?  What are we going to program and how do we get started?  Whe start immediately with two very difficult questions.  How are we going to answer these? What do I want to achieve with a career change?  Freedom and being creative.  Those are my conditions that are my priorities. From this I can already rule out the first option of industrial programming.  Because then I have to go to factories to do programming.  So no freedom.  So a big no no!  We go for independent programming.  Freedom guaranteed! But what are we going to program?   Where can I use my creativity?  Where can I start using the other hemisphere of my brain.  So in your own creations.  Own designs and ideas.  People talk a lot about apps and I have plenty of ideas for that.  That's what we're going for!  Long live creative freedom. But how do I generate an inc...

How the hell did I get here? First love. I finished my studies, industrial computer science - programmer analyst, in 1994. And this, for me, in one of the most beautiful cities in Belgium, namely Ghent. As a child I was already passionate about computers and the emerging internet.  In our family there was a high technological company, which was engaged in advanced cartography technologies.  So I literally saw the first computers driving in. Building machines and programming computers in general became my first love!  And first love doesn't rust. After and during my studies I worked for a subcontractor of a leading car brand.  Started with the production work and so on to a maintenance technician, where I was allowed to maintain, repair and occasionally program the simple robots. Bye bye my love. I lost my job due to the then economic crisis in Belgium.  But don't worry, I was able to go to my family where I could build a prototype of a Photogrammetric machine, w...