As Mechanical Engineer graduate from University of Malaya, I always find my self have deep interest on projects, classes , works or things that are related to programming. Switching career after graduating is more so like a change of wife or your life partner — catastrophic and stress. I am a complete self-taught programmer (No Coding Boot Camp or etc. but purely Stack Overflow and YouTube videos).
Know Your Goal And Stay On Course
Before starting out this journey, you have to ask yourself why you want to choose this journey as your future career? This will determine how you achieve the goal and what characteristic of programmer you will become.
Professional career for 2 years and I am still learning. What determine a best programmer? For me , not by how good is he in solving LeetCode problems but giving output consistently such as contribute in open source project development, create a repo that have at least 1k of likes on GitHub , able to share his knowledge to the community, able to solve daily problems using your skills, able help others grow, answer Stack Overflow questions , be humble etc.
If you don't set your course right, your gas soon will be drained out fast as this journey isn't easy at all. Roller coaster your life will become — sometimes up, sometimes down. What keep the coaster moving is your passion or else thats the end of the journey.
Avoid Yourself From Stuck In A Tutorial Loop Hole
Pick any language ( But not Html CSS as it don't teach you much on the fundamentals) to start with and go through some tutorials — I recommend freecodingbootcamp.
The things you should always avoid — Stuck in a Tutorial Loop Hole. After watching a series of tutorial and you feel like not learning anything which cause you to watch another tutorial again and again. Sometime event start to buy courses from Udemy , switch language without reason and change to another tutorial video. This month works on React , next month works on Angular. Tutorial loop hole it is.
Try to find video that teach you how to build a projects rather than teaching you how to play with all the functions , data structure etc. For example, you can search for how to build WhatsApp using python which will bring more interest, goal and fun in your starting journey. After finishing the projects, start build another projects without watching the tutorial video but browsing through stack Overflow whenever you have any questions. You will soon know how to tackle problems and learn deeply about what that language can do. When you are confidence enough, switching language is much more easier sometimes you don't even have to go through tutorial series again as the concept is the same.
Be Confidence , Brave and Bumble
I came across with a Medium size company. I have an interview with a group of young engineers and soon they find out I am a self thought engineer , they try to criticize me on my fundamental of CS knowledge in a not so humble way but no questions on my practical projects. What is the point for a tons of theory or passing your exam 100% but couldn't even setup a server , or complete a full stack projects that works?
Soon, I met a Ex google engineer that’s so humble in giving guidance and sharing his knowledge in a good way. Will share more if there is any chances.
Striking Your Goal
If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not. — Elon Musk
So do your future. Sometimes goal is what keep you going to improve your self for your better future or dream, soon the world’s future little by little.
Start Doing It Now
I believe most of the readers that came across this article are similar as me from few years back that curious about how the pros become a software engineer through self-taught process. Start working on it is the only way to become the pros. Like right now.
So coder , prepare your keyboard and start coding. Have fun with your Hello World program.
Follow me on:
Website - https://garrick.monster/
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/garrickng724/
Github - https://github.com/GarrickBee
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