Josh Houck

🚀 Tip of the Day for React Native Developers! 🚀 If you're working with React Native, TypeScript, and tools like NativeWind and Expo, here's a quick trick to enhance your development workflow: 🎨 Combine Utility-First Styling with Type Safety! When using NativeWind with TypeScript, you can leverage Tailwind CSS utility classes while maintaining type safety. To streamline your styles and avoid errors, consider creating a TypeScript declaration file for your Tailwind classes. This way, the IDE can autocomplete your utility classes, making your coding experience seamless! 👉 Create a file called `tailwind.d.ts` in your `src` folder: ____________________________________________________typescript declare module 'nativewind' { import type { ViewStyle, TextStyle, ImageStyle } from 'react-native'; // Add your Tailwind class types here export type TailwindClass = 'bg-red-500' | 'text-lg' | 'p-4' | ...; interface NativeWind { // Extend styles [key: string]: ViewStyle | TextStyle | ImageStyle; } } ____________________________________________________ Now, enjoy the benefits of type checking and IntelliSense as you build beautiful UI components! 🌟 Let’s optimize our development experience, one utility class at a time! 🚀💻 #ReactNative #TypeScript #NativeWind #Expo #WebDevelopment #DevTips

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🌟 Exciting News! My article “Hot Class Reload in Java – A Webpack HMR-Like Experience for Java Developers” has been featured on the DZone main page! 🎉 A huge thank you to Marcy Tillman and the DZone editorial team for this opportunity. This post was a deep dive into hot class reloading techniques that give Java developers a Webpack HMR-like experience—a productivity boost I’ve found invaluable. See my LinkedIn post about it here: https://lnkd.in/gMnfs3be

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I’m thrilled to share that I’ve completed "Angular Directives In-Depth" by Todd Motto . 📚🚀 This book dives deep into Angular's core concept: Directives. It covers essential directives like NgIf, NgFor, NgSwitch, NgStyle, and NgClass, explaining their use cases, best practices, and advanced syntax. It’s been invaluable for understanding how these Directives integrate with State Management, Component Architecture, and Observables. Highly recommended for anyone looking to deepen their Angular knowledge! #Angular #WebDevelopment #Programming #Tech #FrontEnd

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Landing offers from 6 companies back-to-back felt surreal, but the real work happened long before the first interview. Preparation was my superpower. 3 of these companies, well known for their notoriously tough interview processes, tested my limits. I made mistakes, but I recovered each time, thanks to the confidence and speed I gained during my prep. During my Google interview I was able to stop half-way in and code up an entirely different solution because I realized I missed an edge case that broke my first approach. At Uber I had run into a hard to catch bug that I was able to resolve with systematic debugging. Each of these moments felt like pressure tests I was ready for because I had done a bunch of mocks that got my nerves down and greatly increased my problem solving speed. My Amazon leadership principles interviewer jokingly commented how I'm supposed to take longer to answer the questions 🤣 . Mock interviews are an important step in interview prep that a lot of people skip. Practice is paramount because the interview environment isn't the same as on the job. Individuals fully qualified to do the work can easily bomb out of not having the right expectations of the interview format. Mocks provide a controlled environment to simulate the pressure and pacing of a real interview, allowing you to identify and work on areas where you might struggle, be it communication, problem-solving speed, or managing nerves. Interviews are an imperfect attempt to understand your fit for a role. It requires things like explaining your thought process as you type out the code, something you never do at work and can cause anxiety. The mental overhead can also trip you up. It's kind of wild how you can be the one who successfully led and delivered an impactful project,  yet struggle to communicate the details in a way the interview can evaluate under the interview rubric. The biggest benefit of mocks is that unlike real interviews, they can give you direct and actionable feedback. Karat is giving out free mock interviews to members of the Brilliant Black Minds program and helping to connect you to top tech companies that are hiring. This is a great opportunity for black software engineers. Highly recommended, its 100% free!

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"How do I get my first job in DE or DS?" I feel horrible when I tell this to people. But look, the market is just really bad for junior engineers and scientists. There are a lot of startups right now and startups need people who can come in and build stuff. It sucks, but junior engineers take additional handholding before they can become independent, which (a) means you're not getting as much work per dollar for the salary you give to a junior, and (b) senior engineers are made temporarily less productive because they need to slow down to mentor juniors I'm not saying this is right or good. But this statement is generally true: the less onboarding you need, the more options you have in where you can work. --- The "bright" side is that in the tech space, you can manufacture your own experience without needing to get a job: building personal projects--ideally 1-2 super deep ones. If you have a family, specifically kids... I don't know. I'm pro family and I believe you're doing something amazing. Similar statement if you're struggling with health issues. The market only cares about output. I think what we're seeing is there are few "true entrylevel jobs". So if you can "make yourself into a mid-level or senior engineer" on your own time, you're suddenly in a new category of applicants and (in my experience) will find that there ARE jobs to be found. There is a simple formula for getting a job in software and DS: Inputs: Pre-onboard yourself. By getting experience and learning. By doing personal projects. And be decent at Leetcode. Outputs: The output is higher *likelihood* of getting accepted and having more options. People who keep the formula going long enough get jobs. But many stop because life pulls them away. Honestly, this outcome is totally fine--especially if they learned they don't find joy in SWE/DS. I'm just here to say that if you STAY and do the formula, it will happen. No guarantees on time, but for reference, I'd bet that a reasonable time frame to expect success is <2 years--potentially much faster or slower depending on your rate of investment. --- I don't have the time I once did to mentor 1:1, but: I'm willing to make Udemy course free for you. It teaches the basics of SWE principles, which are core for both DS- and DE-bound people. It covers the first skills you'd need before you can bring Python to production in any field: git, VS Code, GitHub, CI/CD, packaging, testing, etc. If you're at a point in your life where you can watch 27 hours of videos and another 27 following along with the exercises, I'll gladly send you a code to make it free. Comment or DM and tell me a bit about your situation and I'll send you a link. Happy to accept referrals if you know someone who this would be good for, but I'd like them to message me themselves to indicate that they want this.

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🌟 Kotlin Journey: Learning Through Java 🌟 To hold myself accountable and track my progress, I’ve started this series to document my journey into Kotlin. Along the way, I’ll be using Java—my trusted starting point—as a reference to better understand Kotlin concepts and syntax. Let’s start with variables, the building blocks of any program. Kotlin introduces two key keywords: val and var. Here’s what I’ve learned: 1. val: Used for immutable variables—values that can’t be reassigned once defined. In Java terms, this would be a final variable. In simpler terms, it’s like a constant. // Kotlin val name = "Joker" // Immutable: Can't be reassigned name = "Candice" // This would cause an error // Java final String name = "Joker"; // Immutable: Can't be reassigned 2. var: Used for mutable variables—values that can be changed or reassigned. In Java terms, this is your regular variable. // Kotlin var age = 25 // Mutable: Can be reassigned age = 26 // This is allowed // Java int age = 25; // Mutable: Can be reassigned age = 26; // This is allowed These comparisons have helped me understand the basics of Kotlin while grounding them in my Java experience. I’m excited to keep building on this foundation and sharing more about how these two languages overlap and diverge. Stay tuned for the next post in my series, and feel free to join me on this journey! 🚀 #Kotlin #Java #ProgrammingJourney #Learning

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I feel like 90% of y'all, ESPECIALLY if you are trying to get your first job in tech, are completely missing the MARK on what your portfolio site should be. To me, this is how you should be thinking about your portfolio site. Do you agree? 🤔 #coding #code #programming #softwareengineering

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Public Service Announcements to recruiters. If you have the same job post you re-publish every day for many weeks, we notice. This gives hesitation to apply as we have no idea why you rejected the dozens of other candidates that commented "Interested" on your previous posts. Please provide more details about the position so that it's easier for candidates to know if they are a fit or not. If your intent is to build a pool of candidates, please be candid about it and openly say "Need iOS developer to build a pool of candidates". Believe me, they will still apply.

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To all hiring managers and recruiters, are cover letters still a "must have" when applying for graduate or entry level software development jobs? Please comment below in order to help developers trying to break into the market. #hiring #techjobs #itjobs #softwareengineer #techcareers #techhiring #hr #recruitment #techrecruitment #hiringtech #jobsearch

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Will AI end my career as a frontend developer and freelancer? I don’t think so—if anything, it’s a reminder to stay curious, keep learning, and find ways to use AI to my advantage. This weekend, I dove into RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation), LangChain, and Vector Embeddings. To put what I learned into practice, I built an F1 CoPilot—an AI assistant that uses data scraped with Puppeteer to provide context-aware answers about Formula 1. If you’re exploring similar topics or want to see how it’s done, I’ve made the repo public (link is in comment).

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I’m definitely a DFS type of Netflix Viewer #ai #machinelearning #artificalintelligence #datascience #tech #innovation #llm #languagemodel #NLP #textgeneration #textanalysis #RAG #RetrievalAugmentedGeneration #knowledgegraph #semanticsearch #informationretrieval #livecoding #coding #development #programming #softwareengineer #developer #huggingface #tensorflow #pytorch #python #jupyternotebook

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🚀Boost Your React Projects with Mantine: A Developer’s Dream Toolkit 🚀 If you’re a React developer, you’ve likely encountered situations where you need a flexible, fully-featured UI library to bring your apps to life—enter Mantine! Mantine is more than just a component library. With over 100 customizable components and 30 hooks, it offers a comprehensive toolkit to help you quickly build web applications that are not only functional but also accessible. 🎨✨ Why Developers Love Mantine: • Customizability: Tailor components to match your project’s specific needs. • Accessibility: Build inclusive apps that everyone can use. • Seamless Integration: Works smoothly with popular frameworks like Next.js and Gatsby. One of my favorite features is Mantine’s extensive hooks system. Whether you’re handling form states or managing a complex layout, Mantine’s hooks make the development process a breeze. Plus, it’s packed with out-of-the-box support for dark mode and responsiveness, so your apps look great on all devices. 💻📱 If you’re looking for a library that balances power and simplicity, Mantine is a must-try for your next project! #React #WebDevelopment #Mantine #ReactLibraries Mantine is ideal for developers seeking flexibility and ease of use in their projects. Libraries like Tailwind UI and React Bootstrap are also excellent options depending on your needs .

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Hello World! My team and I are seeking to enhance our CSS skills. Joshua Comeau's CSS for Javascript course looks good, has anyone discovered other online classes or resources that have boosted CSS proficiency? #CSS #FrontendDevelopment #OnlineLearning

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How to Transition from a Non-Tech Career to Frontend Development Ever thought about pivoting to tech but worried it’s too late or too different from your current job? Trust me, it’s not. When I was in nursing school, I realized I needed an extra source of income to feel more comfortable. That’s when I decided to dive into coding. Fast forward to today, and I’ve balanced both careers—saving lives and building amazing websites! Here’s how you can do it too: 1. 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠. I know how busy non-tech jobs can be, but you can start small. I used to squeeze in a few minutes of coding between classes. I had to reduce my social activities so I can have time to code and learn. 2. 𝐁𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥.Learning to code isn’t just a hobby—it can be a career-changing skill. Set clear goals and track your progress. 3. 𝐃𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐠𝐨 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞. Join tech communities. I found endless support in online forums and groups where others shared similar journeys. You’ll be surprised how much easier it becomes when you’re not learning in isolation. 4. 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐚𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧.Apply what you learn by building projects, no matter how small. My first project was a blog about my cats, I’m laughing right now remembering that project 😂😂 5. 𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬:Coming from a non-tech career gives you a unique perspective. I’ve found that my problem-solving skills as a nurse have helped me approach coding challenges more effectively. You don’t have to abandon your current career to transition into tech. You can keep one while building a career in tech and gradually leave once you’re stable financially . If I can do it, so can you! 🚀 ✨ What skills from your current job do you think could help you transition to tech? Let’s talk about it in the comments! ⬇️ #CareerSwitch #FrontendDevelopment #NurseWhoCodes #TechJourney #FromNursingToTech #LearnToCode #CodingCommunity #WomenInTech #SideHustle #SelfTaughtDeveloper

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