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The "Pinned Projects" Lesson is part of the full, Getting a Software Engineering Job, v2 course featured in this preview video. Here's what you'd learn in this lesson:
Jerome discusses the type of work that can be showcased as a pinned project on a GitHub portfolio. Pinned projects should be active, deployed projects with a thorough README containing a detailed description of the project and instructions for running the code.
Transcript from the "Pinned Projects" Lesson
[00:00:00]
>> Now pinned projects, they're for me, now I know I'm in a unique position, I have projects that are actually being used and that people are using today. My rules for a pinned project is project has to be operational, as in, it has to be running live somewhere or someone can view it as a demo.
[00:00:26]
The markdown has to be manicured, right? So when I say markdown has to be manicured, if I go to this pin project, I have everything, I have descriptions, how to get started, pre-quisites. How to install it, testing, all of the things needed to successfully run the project, right?
[00:00:50]
Also you can customize your pins, you can add more, I can add this one to it, right? And then, there you go. Now I have six with it, which is the highest number you can go. So now that I have this one, and I have the OG course, now I'm gonna use those images from the OG course, I will put them on this one, [LAUGH].
[00:01:23]
All right, yeah, so that is how I always pin those. Now for me, this is how, when I look at things, this is how I like having my view for my reviews and stuff, because I'm senior and I'm more on a conversational level when it comes to things.
[00:01:43]
I've been in the tech industry for a minute. So, you can't tell the whole story of my code just by contributions. So when you're looking at, I like this graph that shows, yeah, I've been across three code spaces. I've contributed to 33 repos, but these are the ones I've contributed to the most, where my commits and code reviews, and issues and pull requests are going, like, I'm pushing code.
[00:02:09]
So it looks, 50% of the time he's pushing code, 30% of the times he's doing code reviews. So 80% of the time he's either pushing code or reviewing somebody's code. And then only 9% is pull requests, that's because I'm writing code or pushing code on somebody else's branch versus mine, and just showcase problems with solutions.
[00:02:30]
So 11% is issues, and I'm able to, it gives my users, so I give people that are reviewing my stuff a more complete story versus, hey, you only have 179 contributions in the last year. Yeah, but that's because, I support almost 100 people a year in getting into tech and stuff like that, right?
[00:02:53]
So that's where I am doing the shows, the work that I've done. I actually created this, I wish I had time to show this, but there's a copilot for PRs. And it's amazing, I love it, it automatically makes PRs for you and it answers all of your work and stuff.
[00:03:14]
But it shows the PRs I've created, the issues I've created for people, where I've done work and where I have other open issues at, right? So that is mine, in a nutshell, it also shows on the far left, my website. I usually use Vets Who Code, because that's what I'm most known for, where I'm located, and my Twitter handle.
[00:03:39]
Because that's where people used to find me even though now I use LinkedIn a lot more, so that's where now you find me on LinkedIn. I'm scrolling on LinkedIn or Instagram all the time. We've been seeing a marked flip on Instagram or read all my friends achievements on LinkedIn.
[00:03:57]
It also has achievements like Pair Extraordinaire, so, like I say, I'm always pair programming with people and coauthoring stuff. Yolo, you want it, just merge it. I've done it a time or two, not proud of it, but I do it. Starstruck, I created it for repos. These are all things that GitHub puts on it and it helps round out your brand, right?
[00:04:23]
It's very cool, and sometimes they do cool things like this where the Arctic Code Vault contributor program that they did where they put your code in the Arctic Vault. I have no idea what we're doing with code in the Arctic Vault, because if the world comes to that, no one's gonna be worrying about what code is up there.
[00:04:42]
They're gonna be where are the seeds, sir? Thank you. And Pull Shark, cuz I've opened pull requests that have been merged, I don't know why they say that but I'm bronze and silver now, I'm silver, yay, okay, [LAUGH]. So that's essentially how your profile should look. Going back to a separate profile or a separate repo, your repos should be descriptive.
[00:05:11]
I don't believe in having repositories or projects that have nothing on them, right, especially if you're trying to get a job. You have to program, and do things the way that you would do at work, right? You would never have an empty read me profile on a repo at work, right?
[00:05:31]
They will always have how you run the project. They would always have the code for it and the information, the things that they would always do that at a job. You wanna show that you're ready for a job. Especially if it's a pin repo, a repo that you want them to look at, you need to have it as if it's a repo for a job, right?
[00:05:54]
That's where we have to start thinking in concepts of, from the point of view of, we're doing our work now not just to learn, we're doing our work now to obtain a goal, right, which is to get a job, right? It's a different type of coding, a different type of pushing repos and things of that nature.
[00:06:14]
We're not making repos just to learn how to make a repo, now we're making repos to showcase our professionalism, right? I wanna show another example of a GitHub profile, I've shown this before, it's one of my favorites. Adrian Grimm started learning how to code when he was 45.
[00:06:36]
He is now a software engineer at Methodist Le Bonheur, he does programming and makes products to help make the lives of parents who have children who are sick make their lives easier. So that's what he does for a living now. It is double whammy of pride for me because that's one of the children's hospitals in my hometown.
[00:06:58]
So to know that one of my veteran students is doing work that positively impacts kids back in my hometown, it's double swish for me. My mom, she's uber proud, like hey, yeah, [LAUGH]. But, as you see, he has his profile picture, he doesn't smile, so we asked him to put something more friendly up there as well, and so he had this GitHub octocat, which has a Rolex on it.
[00:07:31]
Don't know why, and his pants is short and long at the same time, I can still see the octocat ankle, but whatever. He has these GIFs of his name, he has all his information on how to reach him. He has a hash flag. He has these collapsible information parts, his pieces of code he's writing that he's done.
[00:07:55]
His GitHub stats. As I said, the dude is an animal. He codes more than anybody in our work. I'm like, nah, nah, I have sleep to catch up on, man. His trophy collection and the languages and tools he uses. As you see, he's kept his a lot smaller and tighter than mine, but he's also been coding professionally for two, three years.
[00:08:24]
I know for a fact he's been on the Ruby on Rails train, so he's probably been doing a lot more of that. His pin projects, he has his portfolio, and he has this band that paid him to make, it's weird, I don't know what type, it's like grunge but Nordic grunge, and this band is international.
[00:08:48]
And they saw his work and asked him to do all their design and development. And I have no idea what this stuff is because, once again, I'm square. So I was like, okay, the corny person in me, I can figure out what you're doing. And, of course, his contribution lists over the last year.
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