Hey there! I'm Alex - a California native lost in France who fell in love with coding as a hobby while working in customer support.
I took the plunge to leave my last job to teach myself to program on a full-time basis at the start of 2020.
I'm a big fan of visiting (and revisiting!) different cities around the world, as well as the many books on my bookshelf.
My talk, Being Utterly Fearless in Your Pursuit of Learning to Code, will cover:
- My background and the lessons I've learned as I've taught myself how to code
- My why for showing up everyday to learn to code was wanting to put myself in a more influential position in my career and to build meaningful apps and programs - especially as a woman in tech
- Switching my mindset from one of being anxious about the unknown to finding inspiration and power in it
In this talk, you'll learn how to:
Cultivate your own why and reason that keeps you coming back to your code editor each day
Err on the side of taking action (instead of over-thinking any decision)
Dive in and identify any gaps in knowledge as you learn to code
Be the creative director of your own life
Play the long game and have a ton of fun
Whether you’re learning to code full-time on your own, going through a bootcamp, getting a degree for it, or if you’re simply carving out a consistent hour of your time each day or week -- stay with it.
This is a time of investing in yourself and in your future.
Stay cool, stay creative, and be utterly fearless in your pursuit of your dream of learning to code.
Resources mentioned in talk:
Connect with me!
This talk will be presented as part of CodeLand:Distributed on July 23. After the talk is streamed as part of the conference, it will be added to this post as a recorded video.
Latest comments (86)
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Thank you so, so much, Sara!!!
This was a very interesting talk Alex! This is in ref How long does it take from moving away from tutorials to a point where you can actively write code from "scratch"? I put it scratch in quotation marks since programmers will never truly write it from scratch due to libraries and templates, but hopefully I got my point across!
Good question! I honestly think you could start programming from scratch whenever you want. It could be as simple as logging something to the console and then getting that to show up on the DOM. Simple program from scratch and then building from there!
I really loved the whole being fearless and unapologetic on the pursue of goals, tech related in this case. The starting with why and keeping that in mind while going through the inevitable downs of coding. Great talk Alex!!
Thank you so much, Juan! I so appreciate that :)
Really loved this talk, Alex! I'm also self-taught and all of the points you made resonated so much with me, particularly moving away from doing tutorials to actually building things. Also, big congrats on doing an amazing job on your first conf talk!! 🎉🎉
Thank you so much, Muna - so, so appreciate it!
Thank you so much, for inspiring me to continue going through my newbie journey.
Thank you, Jane! Stick with it! :D
Great talk, especially like the suggestion to move away from tutorials. I’m working through an online tutorial track. It’s useful / enjoyable for a relative new-comer, but totally agree that there is more problem solving to be done outside of the tutorial space. Great first talk (well done!).
Thank you so much! Tutorials can be so, so useful when we're just starting out - I hope your coding journey is going well so far :)
I still find it so difficult to branch away from using tutorials to level up my skills. I think its because of the lack of confidence I have in what I know and so I just want to say that I appreciate your talk. I think sometimes we need to be reminded that we can do this and there's a reason companies say yes (eventually) and our dev teams embrace and support us! Thanks Alex
Yes, Amanda! I think we need to recognize that stepping away from tutorials is uncomfortable at first because we can become super doubtful that we truly have what it takes. That bit of discomfort at first is a totally normal part of the process!
I really appreciate the tip you provided during the Q&A when you mentioned following a tutorial then scrapping it all and trying to rebuild it ourselves. I find just coming up with ideas is the most difficult and what you said resonated with me and I look forward to putting into practice.
Yes! This is suuuuper helpful when it's more difficult to find a project that we truly want to stick with, and you learn a ton by rebuilding a tutorial project on your own!
Thank you Alex! You've given me motivation to really become my own creative director and really pursuing what interests me most. I'll get building!
Yay, Terri!!!! So happy to hear that!!!
Thank you so much for inspiring us!
Thank YOU for tuning in, Rhaysa!
That was awesome!! I can't believe this was your first talk! Amazing💖
Thank you so much, Ceora!
Thank you so much for this talk.
Of course! Thank you for tuning in, JP!
I highly anticipated this talk and it superseded my expectations!!!
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Awesome talk!
Thank you!!