I have been seriously coding for three months so far. This means that I have focused entirely in becoming a developer in, ideally, a year. It might...
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Hi Nadine, great topic you've raised and I'm looking forward to see the opinions of the other devs.
Let's break it in some Categories:
1. Learning
Nowadays my go-for would be Udemy. There are a lot of options, based on your level and time available to expend on learning a new language or framework. Other option would be looking for Tutorials on Youtube, you will also find a great things there.
2.Keeping Motivated
It's a fact, you must put in practice what you learned, and IMHO the best way to this is working on some personal Project. Sometimes is hard to elaborate a good thing to work on, but take a day and evaluate your routine. What are the things you do everyday? What are the things that slow your day? What are the repetitives one? Even if there are any others solutions available that would solve your problem, you should develop your own. It couldn't be better or most robust, but it will be your solution and the application of all you knowledged.
3.Should you post everything?
I thing you do! Your blog could be your Recipes Book in which you saved everything you learned. You probably will reach it out in the future to remember how you solved a problem and will help others that are facing the same challenge.
I hope to have helped you!
Hi Eduardo! Thank you so much for taking the time to read and share your advices.
Definitely, the blog thing is a great approach. I do have a blog, but I have absolutely no motivation to update it.
Maybe because I know that no one will read it. Also because it is WordPress and I know that eventually I will have to give it up to host it in my website.
Nonetheless, I feel so happy to share here in Dev.to, that I will stick to it.
Maybe when I reach to host my blog in my web I will find the motivation.
Great Article Nadine! SO many good tips.
A couple things you touched on that has been good for me:
Being Organized
I cannot tell you how valuable scheduling time to learn, build projects, listen to a podcast etc. My learning immediately increased when I realized if I don't do SOMETHING almost everyday related to coding it wouldn't work. To really grasp some of these concepts it takes a lot of repetition and practice.
Practice, Practice, Practice
I took a 7 hour course from Will Sentence on Front End Masters called "Javascript The Hard Parts". In that course Will talked about the best ways to become really good not just at writing code but also your technical communication. He described that at some point the spoon fed method, your typical step by step led tutorials will eventually plateau your learning. Not anything wrong with those things. I made it this far on the Team Treehouse FullStack Tech Degree, Udemy and Front End Masters(Amazing! I highly recommend). He described what he called hard learning. Building things that challenge what you know. Solving problems without immediately jumping on StackOverflow. But also not spending so much time researching that you don't actually write any code. He said the best way to learn and challenge yourself is pair programming. Now I haven't found anyone to pair program with as I am still learning like you and also trying to find my first job as a developer. But I can see how pair programming would help in some ways. Also I spent an afternoon thinking of projects that would be fun or projects that would solve a problem for me. As a space geek(SpaceX, Blue Origins etc.) I realized I didnt have a good place to aggregate all the SpaceX Launch data so I decided to build my own using React and pulling from a open source SpaceX API. You can see the early beginnings at fargalaxy.io. So just coming up with something to start writing code that is yours has been super valuable for me.
Anyway those are just my thoughts. Thanks again for the great article. It got my mind running.
Hi Mike!
I am so happy that this lines were somehow useful for you!
I find your advice really interesting. You said in a previous comment to another post that you were thinking of writing more about your job. Any improvements so far? :)
What is pairing programming? Sounds interesting.
I will take a look at this course JavaScript the Hard Parts. Definitely I always try to avoid looking for pre-made solutions at first. Just like I did with the Simon Game. Besides, Stackoverflow is not always clear for a complete noob.
Thank you reading and sharing.
I am a little timid about writing something. Haha. And I am not sure what to write.
Pair programming is basically you have 2 people. One "Driver" and one "Navigator". The navigator has to clearly defined for the driver how they want to write the code. The driver has to interpret the instructions into code. The driver can't jump in and say maybe we should try this or that and the navigator can't jump in a say let me show you how to write that piece of code. Then every so often you switch. That the boiled down version. Im sure their is a better explanation but that is kind of how I understand it.
Hi !
If you want to try being mentored on the code you produce while learning a language from the very beginning, I can only suggest exercism.io.
You start a language track, and go through multiples exercises, receiving feedback from experienced volunteer mentors each time!
The difficulty curve is quite well made, and makes you go through all important features of the language you're learning. They're not meant to make you face actual problems you could get while coding professionally on big code bases, but the mentoring side of it neat !
I'm myself a Java, JavaScript, Groovy, Scala and bash student as well as a Java mentor. Both sides are very rewarding. And it's completely free.
It's not an alternative to anything, but a great complementary help!
It is a great suggestion. I will take a look at it. Thank you very much!
Hey Nadine,
Make something. That's the best way to get from zero to moving. Build things. It's lots of fun and you'll find yourself somewhere unrelated and all you can think about is solving that one function.... Why won't that variable work there???? How am I going to get that data from there to there? It's awesome. Do something that has been done before. Do something new. Do something small, big, whatever. Just build something.
Absolutely right. So far I am dealing with the challenges of the course I am doing at Udemy.
Probably because right now I don't want to face a project I wouldn't know where to start from. And of course not dealing with frustration so far. Hehe.
I have a note with "apps ideas" that will definitely be my starting point. But I first need to improve my personal website.
I think one of the most difficult parts of this, is that I have no clue about the design.
I can't say much since I am also a newbie,
but maybe one thing. have you tried Coding coach?
Their Slack channel is really active helpful even if you don't stick to one mentor.
Awesome post!! very good job. I have posted some tips to help developers land a job dev.to/pato_codes/tips-to-get-a-jo...
I enjoyed reading your account and experiences of decision making and learning. It reminded me of myself. The very best to you. I know you will do very well. Nancy in Houston TX
It is lovely to read this. Thanks a lot for the time spent in reading my posts and commenting. Have you also decided to change career?
How is it going so far?