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10 Things I Wish I'd Known When Starting My Coding Journey

Marisa Brantley on November 11, 2022

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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Tracy Petit

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 ☺️.

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Marisa Brantley

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).

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Tracy Petit

Thanks so much Marisa, much appreciated!

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Prasad Saya

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!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you for your kind words! Yay for self-taught devs!

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Bernd Wechner

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):

  1. They did it for fun!
  2. They usually changed careers a lot
  3. Tutorials probably meant books - often written by Peter Norton ;-) to them
  4. They networked incessantly, met up with like minded hackers and plotted and schemed
  5. Positivity was a natural consequence of networking.
  6. Bad days always happen, that life and not relevant here (unless you've pinned your hopes on good days every day)
  7. Great days abounded. They learned new stuff, and won praise and were generally seen by others as "bright"
  8. They coded when they felt like it, often not for many days, sometimes in sprints of passion
  9. Pacing came naturally, other responsibilities and interests all wanting their time in the sun too
  10. They learned for free

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.

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you for taking the time to share your opinion.

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Bernd Wechner

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 ;-).

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angularfirst

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!

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Marisa Brantley

Thanks so much! I appreciate it.

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Anthony Nanfito

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.

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Anthony! I'm so happy to hear you've bookmarked it for later. That's so awesome. Hope it helps.

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Jack

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

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Marisa Brantley

I'm glad it could help! You can do it! Just keep going. 💪

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Imam Ali Mustofa

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 🤣

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Marisa Brantley

Thanks!

"Street Programmer"... sounds pretty fierce!

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Nicky Rufolo

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.

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Marisa Brantley

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! 💪

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Adarsh TS

Loved your article. Thanks for sharing ♥️

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Adarsh! I appreciate it.

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Gustavo Scarpim

Nice article!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Gustavo!

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Heba Omar

Thank you , well explained!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you for reading, Heba!

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Nenad Mihajlovic

Good point! Very useful tips for beginners. Bravo!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Nenad!

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RajeshlalAnilkumar

Nice article !. Thank you

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Marisa Brantley

Thanks for reading! I appreciate it!

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RAVI TIWARI

i'm Not able to add image in html code

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Marisa Brantley

Ravi - I'd be happy to help. DM me on Twitter with your code.

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Virgo Clarity

Excellent post!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you!

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Sherman Bernard

This is amazing! Thank-you 😊🙏🏽

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you for reading it, Sherman!

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JAKE • Edited

never read anything more apt this week.
Thanks so much Marisa.

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Marisa Brantley

That's great, Jake! I'm so glad it helped you!

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Michele

Thanks! Love IT!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Michele!

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apollo0102

Interesting

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Jonathan Groves

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

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Marisa Brantley

Wow, thank you so much, Jonathan! I really appreciate it.

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ReyTortuga

Very well exaplined! Love it! Congrats! :D

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Rey! Glad you liked it.

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Elvis Gatere Kinyanjui

So good and helpful...thank you Marisa!

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you so much for reading it!

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Md. Abdul Hamid

it is awesome post. thank you

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Marisa Brantley

I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

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Mihir panchal

you are helping a lot ❤️
thanks ✌️

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Marisa Brantley

Thank you, Mihir! Glad to hear it. 😊

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Hazel • Edited

Thank you for this, i really needed this

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Marisa Brantley

It makes me happy that it helped, Hazel. Thank you for reading!

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Oluborode Akintunde Paul

This is amazing and helpful