Phase 2: Programming, Git, and Prompt Engineering
Author: GPS
How does this phase apply to Cloud?
You'll be using code to automate tasks, deploy infrastructure, and work with services. You don't need to know how to build UIs but you need to know how to work with APIs. Plus, knowing how to program will make you more competitive in the hiring market. In the previous step you were introduced to programming basics and wrote your first Bash script. You can now leverage this knowledge and apply it to your choice of programming language.
What You Need To Learn
There are several programming languages that are popular with Cloud: Go, Rust, .NET, JavaScript. If you know any of these, you can continue using them, if not, since you are a beginner, I would go with Python. It's a very popular language and there are many quality free resources out there to learn it.
Along side learning to code, you'll need leverage Git. It's the most popular version control tool and one of the DevOps practices. It is used to manage and share your code. GitHub is one of the most popular repository hosting service.
Take some time now to create a GitHub account if you don't already have one. It'll be your code portfolio and this is how you showcase projects on your resume.
We also recommend you at this point leverage tools like GitHub Copilot and Prompt Engineering to help you write code more productively.
How to break down this phase
I would suggest spending time on these two topics and this timeline:
| Order | Topic |
|---|---|
| 1 | Learn to Code |
| 2 | Learn Git and GitHub |
| 3 | Learn Prompt Engineering |
Resources
| Order | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python Crash Course | A great Python book, also there is an Appendix in there on Git which is great! |
| 1 | Python for Beginners | A 44 part video series introducing you to Python |
| 2 | Complete Git and GitHub course | A video by Kunal Kushwaha |
| 3 | ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers | A course by deeplearning.ai |
| 3 | A Beginner's Guide to Prompt Engineering with GitHub Copilot | An article by Rizèl Scarlett on how to get the most out of GitHub Copilot. |
| 3 | Introduction to GitHub Copilot | An Microsoft Learn Module on how to use GitHub Copilot. |
Projects
| Title | Description |
|---|---|
| Create your GitHub profile readme | Create a README to tell other people about yourself on GitHub |
| Submit a Cloud Dictionary Definition | Get featured on the LTC homepage and contribute to open source! |
| 7 Days of Python | Build a Python Powered Blog |
Things you should be familiar with at the end of this phase
Programming
- Variables
- Data types
- Comments
- Functions
- OOP
- Lists
- Modules
- Dictionaries
- Loops
- Control statements
- Exceptions
Git
- How to create a Git repo locally
- How to create a GitHub repo and clone it locally.
- How to create a git branch
- How to add changes to a git branch
- How to merge Git changes
- How to document code with a README