Summary

In this chapter, we discussed how traditional education by itself is not well suited to fully prepare someone to be a CSA and how the CSA role typically requires a blend of skills and knowledge that is gained by experience in several related roles. We also discussed several ways that somebody can accelerate the development of their CSA-related skills. This included completing side projects, contributing to open source, participating and volunteering in hackathons and traditional internships, and attending user groups.

As a parting thought from this chapter, I would encourage you to not think of experience as being a construct related to time itself, but instead related to what you have seen and done within that time. It is easy to get caught in the “Sam has been working in the career field for 10 years, so they must be an expert” frame of thought without considering whether the individual (including yourself) truly has 10 years of experience or has repeated...