(This post was originally written in March 2022 on my defunct blog. Moved it here.)
Follow this roadmap and you too can be a dev in 15 years.
Pre-2006: My road to coding
- I bought the book Learn C++ in 24 hours. I went to chapter 2 and got stuck.
- I made Starcraft maps and fumbled through the Source Engine.
- I wrote really crappy HTML on my xanga site. Tables ftw.
- I made movies using RPG Maker. I never saved any of them. 😔
- I decided to go to school for video game animation.
2006 - 2010: College years
- College. I took coding courses.
- I learned Java. I discovered I suck with Java too.
- My new life calling - this fart app made $10,000 a day.
- I dropped out. My mate and I hacked together mobile apps, trying to score that fart app money.
- I am broken. I suck at coding. I suck at college. I owe a lot of money. 💀
2010 - 2013: I hate software developers 😡
- Started attending conferences. It was incredibly hostile and exclusive. 🔪 Very 'old guard'.
- WordPress development was hot. And community was super nice.
- Started WordPress themes/plugins. Now I sucked at both Java AND PHP.
- Still in severe debt. Worked with websites (I did SEO and marketing), but never as a bona fide developer.
- Wrote scripts to automate things like bots and social media.
- Minecraft (Java) was getting popular. Should I dig deeper in Java? Haha no. Java is too traumatic.
- Recieved a Raspberry Pi.
2013 - 2015: People give me money... for code?
- I hacked Wordpress templates together. Genesis Framework
- Someone paid me $200 to build them a WordPress site. Am I a developer? No. I built iPhone apps, games and websites. But I'm no developer.
- I fell in love with jQuery, Bootstrap, FontAwesome, and web languages. (ugh to SQL)
- People started talking about React, but it didn't make sense.
- Still building bots. Still creating scripts.
- I automated a huge chunk of my day job. You can Javascript in Google docs, you know?
2015 - 2017: I am developer now?
- Job learn I could build websites. They chose to ignore me automating my job. 🤷
- Job told me to build websites. Yer a developer, Harry!
- Job offloaded me to other people to build websites. I was now doing development for over 50+ hours.
- I spoke at conferences about marketing, seo. Now I was speaking about web development.
- Started fully understanding Javascript. And jQuery is starting to show it's age.
- Data science was getting big. Should I play with Python?
- React is getting much bigger. I still don't get it?!?!
- I helped on a Angular project. Why are JS frameworks so confusing?
- I started working on Laravel projects. I like Laravel.
- I returned to conferences/meetups. Much more inclusive now 🏳️🌈👨🏿👸! The old guard is dead? ☠️
2018 - 2020: I understand JS frameworks
- All my friends were into React, Gatsby, GraphQL. Why is this so hard?!?!
- Finally started learning React (through a Bootcamp), while also digging into Vue.
- 🙌 🙌 🙌 OMG JS FRAMEWORKS MAKES SENSE NOW. 🙌 🙌 🙌
- Still relying on smashing libraries together, like a crutch.
- Work was all WordPress, so I took freelancing jobs to do more JS framework things.
- I lead WordPress meetups, did conf talks, and ran web development workshops. Heck yeah I'm going to make my spaces real ✨safe and inclusive✨. EVERYONE is invited 🏳️🌈👨🏿👸! Go suck a 🍋, old guard! (Yes I'm very spiteful.)
2020 - 2022: The age of fundamentals
- Really find myself understanding the web fundamentals. Vanilla HTML, CSS, JS... real mastery instead of hacking things.
- I learned that the
<details>element is magical. - Spent the pandemic focusing on mental health.
- Started feeling framework fatigue. I could switch between React and Vue. Played around with Svelte.
- Started writing vanilla everything more, or trying to code things directly instead of finding a crutch like a library.
- After 4 years, I finally understood testing libraries.
- Still not going to touch Java.
- Finally found a real use-case for my Raspberry pi. Pi-hole.
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