This is something that I have wanted to do for a couple of months now, provide how I went about landing my first Dev role to aspiring Devs. This is very wordy and more of a brain dump, sorry about that.
My Biggest Regret: I found a book on HTML when I was 12 years old (in 2002). I read it and messed around with it. But nintendo and being outside were more important at the time and I quickly forgot about that book. I wish I pursued it.
There is a bit of a personal back story here which I think is important as it shows that having a reason "why" you're doing this is important. And it also highlights my journey and how hard it was to get here. During this time, I found out my partner was pregnant, 2 weeks after starting my new dev job, my daughter was born, if I can do it, you can do it.
Prior Coding Experience
There are some details about myself that are worth highlighting here. I have an Engineering background, specifically Electrical. During my university (college) studies I learned to code with C, and in particular MikroC, just a flavour of C for PIC microcontrollers. This never went as far as basic if statements, loops and switch statements, but it did give me a foundation for picking up languages later in life.
Apart from this university experience with coding, I dabbled in web languages a few time over the last 10 years, not enough to be proficient in any way and I never practiced programming professionally as an engineer over the 4 years that I worked as one. So with that out of the way, how did I end up here?
Leaving Engineering and Going Into Business
After 4 years in engineering, I felt that it wasn't for me. I decided to leave the field and go into business. This was one of the best things I ever did and easily the worst thing I ever did. The worst not because business wasn't for me, worst because the industry wasn't for me and the people I went into business with weren't a good fit. It financially ruined me and exposed and further developed some mental health problems I had. It broke down my long term relationship which eventually ended and I was left with nothing by the time I walked away.
It was one of the best things because it helped to develop me as a person, it developed my stress threshold and patience. It developed my interpersonal skills, helped me learn about money and people and it broke me down to rock bottom which was the exact thing I needed to actually think about what I wanted.
The Path To My First Dev Job.
Programming, particularly web programming was always something that interested me and I made a very clear decision that this is what I was going to go after. This was mid 2022 and the following 14 months were some of the hardest but it was so worth it.
I worked in a warehouse driving forklifts on night shift, 11pm-6am
I studied from 2pm-10pm
In February, my partner was pregnant with our first child and we were in her home country in South America, where I was still studying
I landed my first Dev role in September this year
2 weeks later, my daughter arrived
Here I am 3 months later, learning .Net and raising a new born
Learning Resources That I Used
Here comes the part you have probably been waiting for. What did I use to get to where I am?
There are 2 main resources that you will want to use. This first one you will see recommendations for everywhere. It has changed a bit since I did this course, there is actually a lot more JS content now.
freeCodeCamp
This is your starting point. This site is great because you can just get started coding in your browser.
Do the "Responsive Web Design Certification course". Complete this before starting anything else.
freeCodeCamp again
Now, this is new for me, it wasn't available when I used freeCodeCamp. JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures (Beta) used to just be JS Algorithms and there used to just be a handful of small puzzles essentially. Now it's a full blown section with some really cool looking projects.
Having had a look at it, I would say go through this section after the responsive web design section. I think you will get a lot out of it.
The Odin Project
The next thing to move onto is The Odin Project. Start from the beginning, yes you will go over some html and css stuff you've already done, but repetition doesn't hurt. The JS you did over at freeCodeCamp will really help here too.
What's great about this site is that it has you set up VS Code, teaching you to start using Git from the start and encourages you to learn through figuring things out for yourself (really important). freeCodeCamp does a lot of hand holding, so it's good to move away from that as soon as you can.
The Odin Project will provide a lot of reading material and projects for you to work on and figure out for yourself. It will also go into back end projects. You will get to choose from a Ruby path or a NodeJS path, just go with NodeJS.
Make sure you go all out on your projects, add extra features etc. and make sure you use Git! The only projects I did before landing my job were these projects on The Odin Project (I didn't even get to start the back end section before landing my job).
Start Applying For Jobs
By this stage, you have honestly got enough under your belt to start applying for a job. I wont go into too much on this because there are so many resources out there to get info from. But I will provide a few tips.
Make a nice, modern resume. A single page is ideal as it forces you to cut unnecessary information.
Get your Linkedin profile squeaky clean, get your experience in there, projects you've worked on, courses you've completed, everything.
Make sure your Github is up to date, make sure your repos have a readme and your code is documented/commented. You want to be able to explain your code if interviewed (I had to pull up my code in my interview).
Look for jobs that align with what you want to do and the skills that you have. Even if it seems like you aren't qualified enough, just go for it. Usually it's a recruiter that is doing the advertising, not the dev team, you just want an interview to get in front of the devs. But don't lie on your application, if you haven't done any React, probably reconsider applying, but if they are looking for JS experience, well you have some, just go for it.
Put effort into your application, don't just copy and paste cover letters. Highlight some of the things they are asking. mention something you like about the company or product they produce.
I don't believe it's entirely necessary, but just make a portfolio page and stick your projects on there, make it look nice, make any animation smooth and make sure it highlights your new skills well.
React
I feel that going further with vanilla JS is more important, but learning some React is beneficial to show you are a competent learner that can figure out a framework. Get to the point you can build your portfolio page in React.
Start Building
At this stage, you just need to start building something. Find some ideas, make a plan and build it. Do not start looking for more courses, this will not make you understand what you are doing any further, avoid tutorial hell. You will see this advice everywhere because it is probably the single best piece of advice. This is why The Odin Project is so good, it forces you to build projects with no hand holding.
Bonus: Responsive Web Dev Course
This is the only paid course I would consider and is entirely optional. This one guides you through designing and building a professional, fully responsive web page. I wont post a link to it, I benefit from it in no way. It's on Udemy and it is called "Build Responsive Real-World Websites with HTML and CSS" by Jonas Schmedtmann. I highly recommend it. Try to find it on sale, it's Udemy, they always have a sale.
Thoughts On Paid Courses
On your journey you will see countless people on social media trying to sell their coding courses. Most of them are junk. Just like all the junk day trading courses, junk ecomm courses, just dropshipping courses. They're all the same. I paid for ZTM membership and I regretted it. Lots and lots of courses, but nothing you can't get for free, and the quality is not what I expected for the price.
The only time you might consider paying for a course or buying a book it when you are looking into more intermediate or advanced topics and you need more specialised knowledge. But by this stage you will have been working as a dev, you could have your employer pay for it for example.
You don't need to pay to learn this stuff. Those 2 resources I have talked about is all you need.
If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer!
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