Ask HN: Not growing as a web developer, what to do?
I've worked in few web development companies in the past, and now I am a sole PHP developer in a place. I like the work, working on client sites and internal sites but I feel like I have come to a halt in growing as a developer.
I've learned everything by either myself, or more importantly from other developers from my previous workplaces - I've never had an education in this kind of stuff. So what I have been trying to look for is either books or videos in regards of what I think I am lacking: - Software architecture - Clean code / smart code - Testing (especially external apis) - DevOps/SysAdmin - Wrapping my head around logical issues
For example I have been struggling with something that is as a problem simple: Load data from Google Analytics, keeping it within the quotas, while having multiple batches that would go over the limit of 10 calls per second. Basically how to in best way to automate the load with cron, split the batches to match the limits, and still store them in a smart way, without over-engineering everything. It is such a stupidly simple issue, but I hate the fact I have so much struggle with it.
Even when I'm sitting with this issue and trying to figure it out, I cannot grasp it properly in my mind. In the past I've had the possibility to go and ask someone, and at the same time learn a lot from that person, but I do not have that luxury anymore, thus try and find info from other sources.
I would also love to be able to read laravel and symfonys codebase and understand it! - but right now I can only use them, but they feel like they are built smartly, and I'd love to replicate that thought process in my code too!
So my question to you all is this: Have you ever been in a situation like this (not growing professionally), and what did you do about it to solve that issue? And I would appreciate if you had any suggestions what I could do to get out of this "blockage"!
If nothing else, thanks for reading!