So I developed a passion for coding during my final year in high school back in 2013. I was introduced to it by a friend. I tried learning to code on my own but it seemed impossible at that time because the concepts were just too complex for me to grab(my brain wasn't much developed for coding, i guess).
In late 2013, i got admission to college to study IT. I was excited because i thought i could finally learn to code since my program had some coding classes.
Unfortunately, it turned out to be a nightmare. Most of my coding classes were all theory and little or no practice. I remember writing an exam on data structures and algorithms in C++, we were asked to write code on paper. over 90% of students in my class including me felt more confused about coding than we were before entering college.
I decided to f*ck the college classes and learn programming on my own. So i did some research on which language language to learn and I decided to learn Java. I'm more of a books guy than a video tutorial so i got 'Introduction to Java' by Y. Daniel Liang. It was a good book and i really understood most of the java concepts because of that book. I did same for Android programming and MySQL.
By 2017, I had a lot of theoretical knowledge in programming but no practical experience. I knew that in order to be a programmer, I needed to write code. But I was afraid to take on projects because when I decide to start a project, all I have is a blank text editor and nuclear missiles going off in my head.(LOL)
I didn't know how to plan the project and design the architecture of my app. This feeling of confusion continued for almost 2 years until I realized one thing: "The only way to do is to do".
In January 2019, i decided to start working on projects no matter how little i know. So i started work on one of my ideas and it has been extremely frustrating and unbelievably satisfying. I hit a bump in the road, i learn how to solve it and by doing that I've learnt a lot of stuff i never knew existed. and more importantly, I've built my confidence to write code and eliminated my fears.
So to all my newbies who are confused and feel like don't know where to start, start small. Pick a project, come up with your feature list, take the features one by one and learn how to implement that feature in your language of choice. By the time you realize, you've become an actual programmer with so much confidence in writing code. Let Google be your friend and may the source be with you.
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