OpenJS Foundation OpenJS World 2021 - Community, 2 Jun 2021

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From YouTube: Facilitating and Demonstrating your Growth as a Node.js Developer - David Mark Clements

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Facilitating and Demonstrating your Growth as a Node.js Developer - David Mark Clements

David Mark Clements has been working with Node.js for 10 years (since Node 0.4) and has been working with JavaScript for over 20 years. In that time he has mentored, taught and led many Frontend and Node.js developers. This combined teaching and software engineering experience has been distilled into three training courses and three certified examinations. In this talk, David will map out a path to help fill any knowledge gaps and accelerate your growth as a Node.js developer in a verifiable, certifiable way.

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Hi there welcome to facilitating and demonstrating your growth as a node.js developer uh at the bottom of the screen. There's a url. You can follow short url dot at forward slash ux, lowercase, hmq uppercase in case um you need access to the slides um in an easy way.

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Let's get started so we're going to be talking about um a couple of areas we'll be talking about demand um about how to fulfill that demand.

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uh We're going to be talking about the things that we can do uh to skill up and the things that we can do to verify uh that we have indeed skilled up just a little bit before that I'll. Explain who I am uh I've been in programming since fairly young age.

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In the last 10 years, I've been doing consulting technical leadership. um I I haven't I'm the author and contributor to a number of open source projects, including um pino and xerox, and I'm involved in fastify a little bit as well.

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um For the last five years, uh I've been working alongside the linux foundation and the opengs foundation which, when we started this uh was actually the node foundation um and I'm uh the technical lead uh of some of the things I'm gonna be talking about and the primary author of them as well, and I'm also the author of the trainings. um uh So that's that's who I am okay,.

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Demand for talent is high, and it just keeps on growing, however, we're at a sort of a place where a lot of people are trying to fulfill that demand.

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But the demand isn't quite matched to the skill level that a lot of people in the industry are currently at, and what this talk is about is trying to bridge that.

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So javascript's very easy: it's the lingua franca of the internet, uh it's used in node.js, it's used for iot, it's used for a bunch of things and and if you're doing small easy things with it, it's fine, um but it is uh difficult to master uh and use it a sort of upper intermediate level, let's say, and that extends to node.js, um not in every company.

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But there is a trend that I've observed during my years of consulting uh where the entry-level developers that have been hired uh don't get as much mentoring, as uh would would be preferred, and part of this is that um the more senior senior you are in an organization, uh the more limited your time is.

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The organization is focused on meeting the bottom line and and accelerating in the market, so that puts people that are st that are sort of at a lower skill level uh at a disadvantage, because uh they don't necessarily get the time and space to digest the things that are going on um and that in an environment that leans towards um delivery, which is good but with delivery. You need quality and quality in terms of writing.

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Code comes from sort of thinking a lot in your own space, uh about how to write code and having interactions with people that have done a lot of that thinking. um So there's a overall.

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The the industry is not um focused on on skilling up developers, um and this has created sort of a chasm uh between entry-level developers and intermediate to senior level developers.

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um People people want to work, organizations want to hire, and uh but they will hire people that are at a upper intermediate level to senior level more than they will entry level. In many cases, this can lead to another issue that I've observed in the industry, which is developers overselling themselves, and they oversell themselves in order to get to get the job and then what happens is they struggle to deliver?

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uh And that turns into essentially a personal hell um you this. That kind of approach can lead to. You know working way too many hours for uh what a person should work um so try to avoid doing that, because uh you'll you'll get yourself into potentially um hot hot water.

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um So, ideally, what we need is we need a way to to leapfrog this situation. We need a path forward um that allows for uh rapid improvement, um but that's connected to real real-world scenarios to real things that you do in a day job, and then we need to be able to verify that quickly and easily. It would be good if employers could, uh with a quick check, know uh that the person they're hiring is uh capable of delivering for the role that they're hiring for.

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So there's a there's: those are ways to skill up, there's loads of ways to grow. um Some are harder to verify than others. um You need to to be able to verify someone who's at an intermediate or upper intermediate level. You need at least someone at that same level, preferably higher to to to verify that, and that's quite a difficult qualitative qualitative endeavor.

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So when it comes to certifying um this isn't this is an optimization for the industry, um and so what we've done is uh what myself and and others that I'll talk about and the organizations involved have done- is created a pathway um to uh to skill up and verify that you've scaled up, and this is the path so over on the left.

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There's a training course that I wrote called introduction to node.js. This is a good sort of overview. It can fill any knowledge gaps, um but if you're already fairly familiar uh you, you probably don't need to take, you probably don't need to start there, but it's it's worth checking out. um If you don't use node uh all the time, for instance, or you only use it for front front-end stuff, then, is the node services development training, which is a training that I wrote to cater to the node services, developer, examination and certification.

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I suggest doing that one before the node application developer certification, um because the services developer exam is a broad uh practical kind of focused uh exam that that that verifies that you can. You can write services with node, which is quite a common case in in the industry.

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um The node.js application development training is a training that I wrote to cater to the node.js application, developer certification, and that goes more broad and allows you to have a fair amount of depth in node. That gives you a flexibility for various other use cases other than building services.

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So the introduction to node.js, as I said, uh it's a sort of uh it's a good course. If you, if you don't use node every day, it's free, you can optionally pay for a certificate once you've completed it.

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We go through creating command line interfaces, building, mock services, implementing real-time services, and we also talk about understanding and leveraging the node.js ecosystem.

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This course uses fastify a fair amount, which is a up-and-coming web framework uh to to demonstrate these concepts, but the the concepts themselves can be applied in to other frameworks. Right node services developer uh is about training you and certifying you to the upper intermediate level, so between intermediate and senior. So it's not an easy exam and it is a quite uh rigorous uh training regime.

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um But the idea is: if, if you can complete this exam, then you're probably most likely uh able to uh work every day um with with creating services that are secure um in a in a in a production environment.

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um It's designed to establish practical effectiveness. So what we're trying to what we're trying to show with someone who's gone through the training and the certification for node services developer? Is that they're they use node in a practical way for common use cases.

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It contains a small amount of involved questions there's about six questions on there and they take about between 15 and 30 minutes each to complete. So they are very involved: you're you're, building things you're, putting things together and then and then you're submitting that to be to be marked.

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It contains two uh very broad topic: domains, servers and services which make up 70 of the marks on the exam and security which make up 30 of the marks on the exam security is focused on um the kind of common mistakes that you could make in a service that that would uh cause um a vulnerability, can't say much more than that, but the training will go into more details. Obviously, here's a testimonial by vinicius mussak of smn technologies.

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I very much like the real code, api construction requests because it reflects our day jobs in our companies. So the reason I chose this testimonial was because it it reflects what I'm trying to say about the node services, developer, uh certification and training and so forth. Is that it's it's really trying to focus on establishing whether you can solve real-world problems using a common approach or a common art piece of architecture that is used a lot node application developer, also trains and certifies to the upper intermediate level, and this is designed to establish overall competency.

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So it goes through 13 topic domains and contains many small questions that are 5 to 10 minutes each. So this is more about. uh Can you do individual um sort of sort of single case uh things with node and it and basically establishes whether you're flexible in in how you use node the uh the exam is uh library and framework agnostic? You can use anything you like as long as you actually answer the the or you solve the problem. That's that's put before you.

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uh The training itself focuses on node core knowledge and includes a couple of key useful libraries um for for um solving the the same problems that you would find on the exam.

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uh The the main point of the application, developer, uh training and certification is um to to sort of help. You have key transferable skills that can work in many many areas when you're working with node.js.

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So this is, this is the breakdown of the the domains and the weightings.

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As you can see, it's a fairly even spread of a lot of things, control flow event system and buffers and streams tend to take the the most weight but they're all fairly evenly spread.

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This is a testimony from luke chinworth of solid digital. I liked that the questions were directly related to real world tasks. So again in both exams and in both trainings, we are trying to connect with real-world everyday things that you may do I've. As I say, I've worked in the industry for for 10 years in terms of actually creating the the domains and creating the questions.

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I wasn't the only one there were others involved, who also had a lot of industry experience and our main focus was trying to uh um again connect the the exam questions to uh to real-world scenarios.

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So these are some of the people that were involved at the beginning in 2016, we met in uh with some of these people in austin, and uh we worked together to decide what should be on uh a node.js exam and then over over time.

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I continued to to work with everyone and and work to to push things forward um uh until we were able to to get it out, so these people know who they are. If you recognize any of them, send them some love, they're, fantastic people.

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These are the organizations that have been involved and are involved in the the the creation and the infrastructure surrounding uh these exams.

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We have near form uh a consultancy company that uh is, that sponsored me essentially to to do the technical pieces uh for automated validation, software and so forth, and the authoring of the content and actually some reviewing as well uh node source that have a product called n-solid that help with the the operational side of things and reviewing the open, js foundation is the certifying body.

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um uh Openjs uh is hosting the this conference at the minute um and uh they will actually be sending out uh an email on how you can get a discount on the training. 50 discount um psi are a proctoring body. So when you take the exam there's a human person uh who watches you, take the exam and that you can ask questions and uh if you have any issues or anything that you can talk to trueability uh hosts the actual exam platform. The exam is conducted in a vm.

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I'm going to show you some other talks to refer to and other materials to refer to, for going into more details on that and the linux foundation is uh uh responsible for vending and coordination.

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So just a few notes on rigor um the uh the training, both the training and the examination uh are consistently monitored by myself and updated, based on changes in the industry and new versions of node. The exam environment is pinned to the latest lts version. The latest long-term support version of node, which is currently node 14.

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in october of this year, we'll be up upgrading it again. This is this will be the uh second upgrade and the third um release of the exam we'll be upgrading again to node 16., um the prior release that we did in october. uh Updating to uh I forget, which note I think was no 12..

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um uh Yes, it was uh the no sorry the prior release was no 14 and we updated that so that you can use ecmascript modules natively. We don't make that the default in the exam, because currently in the industry, people aren't using native ecmascript modules they're using maybe transpiled and different things, but that's different.

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So when the industry starts to use them uh in anger, um then we'll update the exam so that that's the default instead of requiring model exports for it. This is an example of how we keep it updated. We also conduct fairly frequent psychometric analysis.

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We have a psychometrician who goes and analyzes the uh the how many people are passing and failing individual questions and then uses statistics to measure whether those questions are are healthy uh in terms of the difficulty level and that we expect it to be and the difficulty level that it appears to be from that analysis and then we uh adjust based on that. So we're constantly uh tweaking uh to to improve it and have been doing, for um I think two and a half years now.

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So it's gone into a really um really great place place. I think um we also do sample manual marking from time to time uh to because our marking is actually automated um to to check that things are working as we expect.

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Here's a testimony from nathaniel bergwin of chief technologist of technologist of booze allen, hamilton as a manager.

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I would feel confident in a candidate who possessed this certification.

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Obviously, the reason I've chosen that testimonial is to support my point or that the whole purpose of the training and the certification is to help people go from one skill level to another skill level and have that skill level easily verified using our certification badges that can go through a verification process.

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So that so that, when people are hiring they can, they can make informed decisions, um I'm going to read it one more time as a manager. I would feel confident in a candidate who possessed this certification.

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Here's some resources, uh if you want to dig deeper I've spoken about this a few times and also with the excellent adrian estrada of uh node source, uh there's a keynote uh that we did at an open, js event when we used to do them in person, hopefully we'll be doing that again at some point in the future and a couple of others. There there's also a really great blog post by someone who who took the training and the exam and they write they write up about their experience, so check that out.

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It's very good one other point: the retake is free, so if you, for any reason, uh fail the first time you have a free retake for the uh services and uh application developer exams. um I've already mentioned this, but um I think for a limited time, uh there's a discount of 50 uh for uh the training, material and certification material, and you should have an email in your inbox about that.

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If it's the second of june or after uh as you watch this a couple of links from the stuff that we've talked about, and thank you very much, if you have any questions I'll be on a slack channel, I think it will be announced somewhere.

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