Teaching myself to Code

That’s right! You heard me. You just can’t. Well, you can — but honestly, you probably shouldn’t. Why? Because you don’t know anything about it. Unless you’ve been coding since you started growing teeth or hit puberty, coding will likely be a very foreign subject to you.

Admit it, you’re staring at a black background and a bunch of colorful text formations you have no idea of. There’s no shame in that. There’s no shame in feeling like you’re watching a scene from The Matrix and have no f–ing clue what you’re doing. It’s okay. The less you know, the better. This way you’ll be looking at things more objectively and be less influenced by things you may have heard or read in the past. Things change, so it’s important to do your research.

Precisely why I’ve done mine. No seriously, I have. After going through hours of YT videos, google articles, cross referencing yearly analysis of programmer salaries, job demands and programming trends I’ve pin pointed the two programming languages I (and probably you) should be learning.

Drum roll

Javascript and Python.

The reason is simple. Javascript, apparently having the stigma of being lackluster at its inception, slowly evolved into a very powerful programming language and according to many credible websites like stackoverflow, is on a MASSIVE rise right now.

It’s medium-flexible, meaning you can develop desktop and mobile frameworks, back-end services, browser plugins and almost anything else you can think of. The demand for JS developers have increased tremendously the past couple of years and its application has become much more popular throughout the industry. Demand also means big $$$.

Why Python second? Because it’s a very popular language and has massive support just like C++ or Java. I’d love to learn Python after Javascript because I believe many future technologies like AI or VR will require automation and “machine-learning” capabilities, which is something Python can offer. Also, it’s mentioned to be one of the easier programming languages to learn.

Alright, with that I think I’m going to conclude my post. I’ve started this long and arduous process with some good-old research and hard facts. I usually do this anytime I try to learn something new. I just go out there, devour the web for information and craft myself a logical path to follow. With how easy it is to access information, it’d be unwise to jump into anything before at least narrowing the path you’d want to take. So this is my path, and I welcome you to follow what comes next. Cheers.

Well well, if it isn’t the Mr-I-will-post-regularly-once-I-start-learning-code… I swear sometimes my resolve is weaker than a drunk college student’s new years resolution. Oh speaking of which, happy 2020s everyone!

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Well, without getting too festive about it I’m going to outline what I’ve been doing so far, contrary to what my absence might convey, I’ve been going at it. Hard.

After I’ve narrowed down the path to what I want to learn, I’ve researched how I can learn it.

Generally, there’re 3 ways to learn software development. Academia, Code camps (or code boot camps), self-taught.

Academia – long, can be expensive and not always the fastest way to learn something. Also your enthusiasm and motivation to pursue this education heavily depends on how good of a teacher your professor will be. Benefits, you get a degree and for any company that’s asking a degree as a prerequisite, an extra venue for career opportunity.
Code camps – condensed, to the point and very effective. They can be costly, but some offer certificates that can be recognized just like an academic degree. You’re also collaborating with other code enthusiasts of all levels and generally end up with a few projects under your belt once the camp ends. An invaluable option for people who don’t have the continuous motivation or discipline to learn coding self-taught. Speaking of which…

Two out of three developers are self–taught, and other trends from a survey of 56,033 coders — Quartz.

Self-taught – Internet is an unbelievable tool to learn. There’s so much information, free or paid that you can use to teach yourself entire careers… It is astounding! Websites like Udemy, Freecodecamp, Codecademy etc… give you dozens of hours of interactive, hand-crafted curriculum for free (or for more features and comprehensive packages, a whopping cost of 2 tickets to the cinema). It’s never been easier to learn through internet. That being said, having done this for about a month and a half now, there are some challenges. Solitude and/or having the mental fortitude and discipline to actually do it.

No matter what path you choose you’re going to teach yourself how to code. There’s no programmer in the world so able to spew an entire programming language or its syntaxes. They all google, they all stackoverflow, they all github, they all learn and self-teach. So this step is almost inevitable even for the seniors in the job market, why should you be any different?

With all that being said, my course of action has been to Self-teach myself programming using course websites like Udemy and Codecademy/freecodecamp. In the meantime, as I’m about to finish these courses, I will be applying for intern/junior positions and arrange a code camp.

Whichever option comes first, I’m going to take it and start stacking some professional experience under my belt. Be it an internship or code camp, both are invaluable experiences for an aspiring programmer and will give you the necessary field knowledge to be ahead of your competition.

I’ve been obsessively learning the past couple of weeks. There has been some changes in my trajectory but I’ll be writing about that and more on the following post. Stay tuned and happy coding!

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Day 0: You can’t just jump at it!

Day… Not sure but definitely not 1: How do we begin?