Hi, I'm Sebastian and want to learn Cardano

English Introductions
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Hi everyone!

I’m Sebastian, a 25-year old student of “media computer science” in Germany. I have only recently discovered blockchain technology, but it has sparked a lot of interest in me from both the technical and philosophical side of it.

I have done a lot of research on investing into coins first, and the more I did, the more the idea of actually pursuing a career in this space one day picked up in me. Especially Cardano has really ‘stolen my heart’, because of the philosophy it follows. This is one of the few projects for me where the people working on it, are really in it to change the world, and not to get more and more rich.

All that said, I am still a student and got some spare time to dedicate to learning, but I am kinda overwhelmed with the possibilities and directions to go.

I am good at web development, an area where I am currently practising and learning autonomously at home. I am also good at UX and Design, which comes from the ‘media’ aspect of my degree.

I also have a great talent for programming, but so far I didn’t dive deep into any language, because we are constantly changing languages in my study. So I know basic Java, C, C#, PHP and JavaScript, the latter being the one where I am most skilled due to the web development practice at home.

So I would love if you could guide me a little bit. How could I contribute best to Cardano? What are potential job opportunities and where should I focus my area of learning on?

What theory would I need to learn deeply? What programming languages are best to learn?

Should I focus on smart contract programming? Or on blockchain infrastructure and architecture? IBM offers a master’s degree close to me on Blockchain Engineering, but of course it would go rather into closed networks with Hyperledger Fabric and so on, and more on the architectural, engineering side of blockchain rather than smart contracts and dapps. But I fear that the latter doesn’t really give a lot of opportunities to earn a living just now? Also for IBM I would need a lot of Java experience so I would have to focus on that now (and I dont like Java too much)

Thank you for any answers in advance. Just for reference, I have created a plan of things I need to learn to become a Web Dev and Smart Contracts programmer with a lot of background knowledge on network architecture and so on, but its a lot. Maybe you could also try to evaluate this and what is missing, or not necessary?!

It is also hard for me to know which to do next, because it all seems important.

curriculum

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7 Likes
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I’m favorably impressed with your attitude! I don’t have a lot of advice for you other than continue to learn and stay involved with the community. I look forward to hearing from you in the future and seeing how your career develops!

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Welcome @Sareth :slight_smile:

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Hello @Sareth,

Hold on to that positive feeling, tightly, don’t let go of it, as you will see many challenges over your career, like the one you are facing right now.

A question for you, have you lead anyone in that media space you know, made a sale?

Sales Is Leadership

Sell to someone who will gain from what you have to offer. You will obtain more direction from helping someone who benefits from your expertise than from anything formal education will teach you. Develop your formal education with real-world problem solving, go out and lead in your spare time.

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I’m recommending a learning tool that I believe will help you immensely, TLA+.

“TLA+ is a formal specification language . It’s a tool to design systems and algorithms, then programmatically verify that those systems don’t have critical bugs. It’s the software equivalent of a blueprint.”

Worth your time, check it out.

One more worth your time:

“What happens when you take a procedural program riddled with partial functions and effects, and incrementally refactor it to a purely functional program—and then dial it up to eleven? In this live coding session, John hopes you’ll be amused and a maybe little terrified as he shows you where pure FP leads on one of the simplest programs possible, pointing out both the benefits and the costs of pure functional programming, and giving you an appreciation for how functional programming techniques scale to and deliver the most benefit in very large teams and very large applications.”