I grew up as a curious kid, picking up books I could lay my hands on, driving screwdrivers at electrical gadgets in the home. This, I would say, fueled my drive to get into tech as a self-learning frontend developer. However, my journey has been stalled by quite a number of challenges, major one being self-doubt (as much as I hate to admit) and in turn has made finding consistency a tough nut to crack.
In this writing, I pointed out a number of challenges that I faced as a self-learning junior developer and how I managed to crawl out of those pitfalls.
Tutorial cycle- I started my journey as a self-taught developer watching YouTube tutorials and coding along. As educative and informative as these videos may be, they do not fully encompass the fundamentals of certain tech concepts. To put it in context, while I learnt to build react native projects, I always got stuck midway through the videos, why? This is because I was watching a tutorial made some 3 months ago in a field where stacks are getting updated on a daily basis. As much as you could learn a handful from tutorials, you need to ask yourself the question, do I genuinely understand the basics of this code or am I blindly following along?
Documentation- I have discovered that there is no easier way to understand a framework or library than reading the docs. The docs were written by expert technical writers and have bridged the gap between complex technical concepts and easy-to-follow documentation. So to grow maximally as a self-taught developer, you need to learn to read and understand the docs.
Engage in tasks and challenges- Another way to learn how to code is to practice your skills on tasks and challenges. There are several of these coding challenges, an example is Frontend Mentor. This, I believe, will equip you with a skill that’s very ingenious to developers, problem-solving.
Pick your niche- Web development is as broad as you can think of, most definitely broader than you can think of. So it is very important to pick your poison and stick by it. Starting off, I was pretty much confused, I loved the aesthetics of Awwwards landing pages, I also had a kink for building mobile apps, and oh, there’s a number three, Threejs, I saw a reel of a 3D website and I couldn’t help myself but want to learn. However, it is not impossible to be good in all of these, but as a self-learning developer, it will really help to stick with a niche and go all out on it.
Community and mentorship- Being in an active community or having a mentor can go a long way in your tech journey as a self-learning developer. These will push you to go the extra mile at bettering yourself.
These are the bits that influenced my journey as a self-learned developer, and I’ve not put my foot off the gas yet. I’m still on this journey, and so should you. Watch this space, I’ve got something exciting coming out in a few days.
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