[KPUG] Welcome to KPUG (and software engineering apprenticeship)

[Gryphon Shafer]

Greetings all,

You're receiving this email because you expressed an interest in one 
form or another about joining what I'm calling (for lack of a better 
title) a software engineering apprenticeship program or process.

I'm a strong believer in autodidacticism, or self-directed learning; and 
this whole attempt here is really to solve a problem my company has with 
finding and hiring qualified software engineers. My goal is to provide 
you the syllabus, the basic road map and instructions to plot your way 
through self-learning a series of technologies. I won't be giving you 
many direct answers, direct education or training, or really a lot of 
support. Instead, what you'll get is like a treasure map, directions to 
the next steps. You'll have to put in a considerable amount of effort, 
time, and mental energy. However, I believe it's worth it. In the end, 
you'll have a good grounding in a wide set of software engineering skills.

There are 10 folks currently involved. I also invited in 2 folks who 
work for me at Golden Guru to assist me assist you. I don't have 10 
positions open to fill, but my plan is to hire the first set of folks 
who build their skills up to the necessary levels. That being said, I'm 
highly confident that regardless of open positions at Golden Guru, if 
you get through the process, you'll be able to leverage these skills in 
the software engineering market, in well-paying and fulfilling jobs.

So here's how this will work: I've usurped KPUG for this purpose. KPUG 
is the Kitsap Perl Users Group. The goal of a users group is to promote 
a particular technology or set of technologies, help folks become 
masters in that area, and to promote the area's use. I've registered 
each of you to the kpug-pm at pm.org mailing list, which is how you're 
receiving this email. If you send an email to kpug-pm at pm.org, it'll be 
broadcast to all 13 of us, so it's a great way to exchange questions and 
solutions.

Each Monday, I'll email out some instructions about the next set of 
things to do and learn. Most everything will include a series of basic 
instructions, references to online materials, and goals to accomplish by 
the next Monday. In nearly all cases, you'll discover that you can 
accomplish the basic instructions fairly quickly; however, I don't want 
you to do that. Instead, strive not to do any instruction until you 
fully understand what that instruction is. For example, this week, I'll 
be asking you to build a virtual machine on your desktop or laptop. 
There are several systems and programs you'll be installing into this 
VM. Instead of just following through the instructions to complete your 
VM, spend a little time Google-ing the names of the programs and reading 
up on what they do. You don't need to be an expert on any of them yet, 
but you should be able to describe what they are and at a basic level 
how they work.

This sort of thing will be a theme throughout the process. You'll need 
to push yourself to dive. Fortunately, since software technology built 
the Internet, virtually everything you'll need to learn is freely 
available on the Internet. It just takes some time Google-ing and reading.

If at any time you'd like to drop out, please just email me or 
unsubscribe from this mailing list.

OK, and with that, I'll be emailing out the work for this week. Welcome, 
and good luck.

Gryphon


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