My beginning - JavaScript

I started out on the journey of learning to code on 18 June 2020.

That morning, I woke up, checked my phone and saw a post on LinkedIn. It was written by someone I didn't know, an ex-Uber driver, and they simply expressed how glad they were that they'd learned to code. I declared to my husband then and there that I was going to learn to code. He just looked back at me sleepily.

I have since found out that, by utter coincidence, the ex-Uber driver is in fact Nat Sharpe, a software engineer whose wife, Martha Sharpe, I own the book of and met within the Twitter community.

My role as an Executive Assistant to the CEO of a FinTech startup had been made redundant due to the pandemic and I was feeling a little lost, spending all my time walking and running and just generally feeling like I should be doing something - but I just didn't know what.

I had exactly no knowledge of coding, bar a little dabble in VBA in my previous job - again, I had mostly taught myself. I had never opened or thought to look at Visual Studio Code before, and would half listen to my husband (a solution architect at a FinTech company) when he talked about his latest API adventures.

After discussing what language I should learn with my husband, I settled on JavaScript due to the amount of options I would have regarding front or back end development. After a coffee, I searched on Udemy, a site I'd used before, for JavaScript beginner courses and found one on sale. A bargain! I had prepared to invest in my knowledge journey, but the sale price was about £10.

So far, I would say I'm a little less than a quarter of the way through my 'JavaScript basics' course and as I'm participating in the #100DaysOfCode challenge on Twitter, I think I'll need to get a new course by the end of that - which I fully intend to do. This isn't only a 100 day learning journey! I'm enjoying it immensely so far, and I've learned a lot - just don't ask me how to use .reduce()......

Speaking of Twitter - I have been blown away by the level of support that the tech community offers! I have had complete strangers, from the other side of the world, spend considerable time trying to help me fix a problem in a load of code that I've written but don't fully understand. People from all stages of their learning journey - #CodeNewbies like me, and developers with 20+ years experience - all mingle together and teach, learn, make silly memes about each other, and encourage each other! I can post that I'm having real trouble understanding a new concept that I've come across and would like to learn, and I'll often be inundated with peoples code snips, examples, explanations and offers of help!
I've used Twitter in the past, but it's never felt as inclusive or supportive as it does now.

My family has also been a wonderful support - my husband, with degrees everywhere and over a decade experience in seemingly everything except JavaScript - my mum, who doesn't understand what I'm doing but says she's proud, and my younger brother who says 'that's well cool!'