Self-Taught Developer Roll Call

Hey fellow developers, self-taught or otherwise. I'm going to use this medium to talk about aspects of the things I have been learning while on this self-taught developer journey.

Where to start?

I've always loved computers. When I was younger I was very adept at 'solving' the tech problems others around me experienced. This was only ever in a passive way. As I grew older after getting a BA & MA in education I finally acknowledged that I really wanted to pivot into tech.

I started watching videos, reading articles, looking for tutorials and asking for advice. The more advice I got and the more I researched, I quickly realized the wealth of what I didn't know and the surplus of information that existed and was continuously already changing in the tech space. Suffice it to say, I got extremely frustrated. Eventually after trying and giving up at Python, the Free Code Camp syllabus, #100DaysOfCode and a short stint into Swift, I sat down and decided that with my indecisiveness it genuinely didn't matter what my first language was.

Game plan

On the last day of 2021, I started the Odin Project. I made a spreadsheet to do my check-ins and I found the support needed to keep me accountable. As of right now I'm all done with the Foundations section, with 3 projects under my belt that I am proud of, though they're not optimized for mobile just yet.

I've learned a lot more about HTML, CSS and JS. I've been exposed to some Emmet re workflow and been learning and using Git and Github. I've been using my terminal more to create files and directories; it's so much faster.

Build Projects

I want to build more projects based on the things I like or would want to use. A lot of the advice I've received is to build things; recreate things, break things and then fix them.

Moving forward

Eventually I need to decide what type of developer I want to be and I've got check-ins set up for that, but I've also realized that there is a lot of assumed pressure to do things quickly in tech. If you google how to become a programmer the results are plenty, with many of them having headlines like 'Become a Web Developer in 3 months' or 'How I quit my job and made a career in tech in 3 easy steps'. The headlines are flashy and can easily discourage beginners when 3 months have passed and they're still confused about anonymous functions in JS or closures in Swift.

As a beginner myself, I guess my only advice is to not get too bogged down by all that you don't know that you know. At least that's what I've been trying to do. This isn't my beginning, not really, but aren't we always beginning in some way as learners?

My name is Gervanna and I'm going to be a developer.