There are literally thousands of resources these days that can help you learn how to code. Do you have the desire and the grit? You can become a software developer. This is definitely true as far as it goes, but it often silently assumes that you have an infinite supply of other equally important resources — namely time. If that's true for you, mazel! Take advantage. But, for many of us, it isn't true — particularly those raising young kids and working full-time.
All of that is to say how much I really appreciated hearing a recent episode of the CodeNewbie podcast that took a minute to shout out to those folks. The ridiculously talented Sarah Drasner and always-awesome host Saron Yitbarek took a minute to say "props to you all! We don't know how you do it," and it's hard to express how validating that felt.
When I try to convey to folks how passionate I am about coding, I explain that I went through an online bootcamp when my daughter was an infant and I was working a full-time lawyer job. I try to take advantage of every free second to learn or practice. I still frequently get up at 4:30am and stay up late into the night to make the time. I'm hardly alone. There are so many of us, many folks with time crunches much more challenging than my own. They're sacrificing sleep and family time because they love this thing and want to be good at it.
I've often found it frustrating that there is not more discussion of this topic in the dev community online. So many thanks to Saron and Sarah for the good words!
Top comments (2)
Thanks for writing this! It's common to think of tech workers as young + uncommitted, because theirs are the stories we see the most. We need to hear more stories like yours, to help give folks who are in more logistically difficult situations a better pathway into our line(s) of work. One of the reasons I joined this site, in fact, is that there seem to be a higher percentage of articles by under-represented communities.
Due to family illness, I've ended up in a situation where I'm a full-time coder but also a full-time homeschooling parent. Your post has inspired me to think that maybe I should write more about it. Maybe hearing my story will help to buoy somebody else in a similar situation.
Thanks so much! I totally agree about dev.to — I think it encourages an awesomely diverse community.
You should definitely write about your experience. I'm sure others will find a lot of encouragement in your example!