Do you remember when you first decided to learn to code? The excitement, the wonder... the feeling of utter cluelessness?
Coming from a paralegal ...
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This post was EXACTLY what I needed to read. THANK YOU so much!!! I need so much encouragement right now as I struggle through JS and the fact that I am in my 50’s (yes, you read that right) doesn’t make it any easier. Imposter syndrome to the max, even though I know I have this in me. I will be taking your advice to heart and pushing forward. Again - thank you ☺️.
You've got this, Tracy! Being a career-changer sure isn't easy. I hope these tips help. Best of luck! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter (twitter.com/MarisaBrantley).
Thanks so much Marisa, much appreciated!
Its a good and elaborate compilation of so many aspects a coding journey. Though I have my own journey, I never took any paid help or mentoring, except for occasional free/paid training. I am also self taught and I started a long time back. Happy coding!
Thank you for your kind words! Yay for self-taught devs!
I like this. A lot.
That said, it seems the audience is a new kind of wanna-be programmer, the type that wants to be a programmer ... ;-). Or developer if you prefer or coder, whatever.
While that may seem like a tautology, rest assured it is not ... you see there is a considerable and large I suspect, if perhaps top-heavy in age of what I consider the hobby programmer.
They learned, as I did, not because they ever had a goal that was beyond today or this week, but because these new fandangled things called computers were really interesting. They essentially got all these 10 things for free, it came natural to them (backwards):
I say top-heavy in age as I suspect there was a larger number of such hobby programmers landing in diverse jobs and roles that involved coding that cute their teeth before the World Wide Web emerged, and that post this time, I suspect that the market for such skills has grown immensely and so too, the supply of them so the game changed slowly and now there are indeed many young people looking to have a piece of this large pie in a very competitive world.
For a little context because I am not alone demographically, I studied mechanical engineering and worked on steel mills, but have not been in one role or job for more than about 3-5 years since the early 1980s and been employed in areas as diverse as math modelling, consulting, liaison, programming, quality assurance, technical writing, project management, sales, sales management, marketing, training course development and delivery - today I run servers in my basement, host websites for NFPs who can tolerate the inevitable downtime of small shop hosting, I develop mostly with Python, JavaScript, and CSS, but have been employed to write and maintain FORTRAN, Visual Basic, C# and more.
Many of the people I call and called friends learned to code on the fly and in my recruiting roles (I have hired a number of people) I have always preferred to see people with core competencies in something real (engineers, scientists, etc) who could code comfortably, over coders who were out of touch with the real world (that most of my coding interests have modelled over time - never been so big on the financial sector).
But as I said, this is a great list, especially for those who are stressed about the modern world, about wanting to perform well in a very competitive IT sector now. Still, one counsel I continue to offer that is not on the list is:
10b. Yes Have Fun, but go one better, do mostly if not only, things that interest you, that draw you in, that you find fun. If you do that, you will shine at those things and do well at them and these and your passion for them will open doors for you. If there's something you feel you "need" to learn to cut the grade, by all means, your call, but remember, this may just not be, your thing ... and it may just not be, as important as you think. You job prospects will rely, in the end, upon your relationships (networking) and your enthusiasm (which charges you with the energy to keep looking).
But this I find is a life counsel not an IT counsel, because it may well be that IT is saturated and your interests lie elsewhere and you shine elsewhere in particular in areas less popular at present, less competitive ... there's always room for hobbies.
Thank you for taking the time to share your opinion.
Not at all, thank **you **for sharing yours! There's a whole new market of budding young wannabe devs that can learn from the previous fold ... always.
Never though, forget the power of pure interest driven (sometimes aka hobby) activities .... over set learning goals and skill acquisition goals. Learning and skills flood in all by themselves in the former scenario, IMHO. Usually ... the rule is always with its exceptions ;-).
This article is just the perfect read for the devs who are trying hard in their journey or getting demotivated due to many reasons in their day to day career.
Many thanks Marisa for bringing up these points. They will definitely help many on the way as they thoroughly read the points.
Keep them coming!
Thanks so much! I appreciate it.
The part about feeling like "I'm not cut out for this" is exactly how I feel right now.
I fell into tech, only learning SQL and now I'm trying to learn C# on the job and it's so different in everyway, I feel like I'm not a "real" developer because I can't get my head around this new way of thinking. This gave me a bit more hope though, thank you
I'm glad it could help! You can do it! Just keep going. 💪
Nice breakdown dude! 🔥
I've been 10 years in coding world, am self taught and the marathon is still running... Good Luck dude!
I called my self as Street Programmer. Cuz so many unconventional method in my code 🤣
Thanks!
"Street Programmer"... sounds pretty fierce!
This is a great list! Thanks so much for this awesome reminder! I didn't need to hear this today BUT there have been days where I definitely needed to hear this so I'm bookmarking it and saving it for those days (because I know they'll happen again). Thanks so much for writing this useful post.
Thank you, Anthony! I'm so happy to hear you've bookmarked it for later. That's so awesome. Hope it helps.
Loved your article. Thanks for sharing ♥️
Thank you, Adarsh! I appreciate it.
Hi Marisa!
How can you “Pace yourself” with a bootcamp?
You say learning to code is a marathon, not a sprint, but in a bootcamp it seems more like a sprint, and it make you feel more and more not good enough, because more difficult task are required daily.
The “Everyone's journey is different” but in bootcamp you have to follow what they say..
And all this reasons are make me doubting a lot about the expensive bootcamp I’m doing.
Cause every time you feel like you have a lot of basic learning holes but they have to keep going.
Hi Nicky! Thanks for reading the article.
Attending a bootcamp is just part of your learning journey. You'll still continue to learn to code after it. So while your bootcamp seems like a sprint (and rightfully so), learning to code overall is a marathon.
You can do it, Nicky. I think you're having the same concerns as so many other people who attend bootcamps. The pace is intense, but (I've heard) worth it. Is there an option for you to possibly speak to alumni from your bootcamp? It might help hearing their stories and seeing where they are now.
Best of luck! 💪
Nice article!
Thank you, Gustavo!
Thank you , well explained!
Thank you for reading, Heba!
Good point! Very useful tips for beginners. Bravo!
Thank you, Nenad!
Nice article !. Thank you
Thanks for reading! I appreciate it!
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Ravi - I'd be happy to help. DM me on Twitter with your code.
Excellent post!
Thank you!
This is amazing! Thank-you 😊🙏🏽
Thank you for reading it, Sherman!
A very useful summary. It’s good to remember that we all struggled with the same challenges. I’m sharing a link to this with my two thousand LinkedIn connections.
Keep safe...
Jonathan
Wow, thank you so much, Jonathan! I really appreciate it.
never read anything more apt this week.
Thanks so much Marisa.
That's great, Jake! I'm so glad it helped you!
Thanks! Love IT!
Thank you, Michele!
Interesting
Very well exaplined! Love it! Congrats! :D
Thank you, Rey! Glad you liked it.
So good and helpful...thank you Marisa!
Thank you so much for reading it!
it is awesome post. thank you
I'm so glad you enjoyed it!
you are helping a lot ❤️
thanks ✌️
Thank you, Mihir! Glad to hear it. 😊
Thank you for this, i really needed this
It makes me happy that it helped, Hazel. Thank you for reading!
This is amazing and helpful