Hello everybody,
I want to introduce myself and what this is all about: I am Markus, 31 years old and work in a media agengy in a very niche job. I develop Apps with the programming language R and the “Shiny” Web-Framework (which works without knowing HTML/CSS or JS). There are only a few persons who do this (despite I really love it, it´s an awesome framework, https://shiny.rstudio.com) .In Data Science most people work with Python and build more models insteads of Tools and Dashboards.
So I am less skilled than data scientists with data and less skilled than web developers with UI´s and backends. I can not really compare my skills to anybody, since my boss does something totally different and I don´t have a colleague who is a developer. Something I really think I suck at what I am doing and that I am just an impostor. This sometimes really frightens me and I am afraid not to be employable if they would not need me any more. Job openings for R shiny are very rare.
I ended up with a worthless degree and worked in a mind numbing market researcher job after 9 month of searching for a job for two years, which was a horrible experience. I swear to myself that this will never happen again and this is why I want to expand my skills and be a “real” developer who is capable or writing beautiful and functional apps with JS or Python too. My dream would be to be skilled enough to do some freelance work as a side-hustle :-).
I tried many different ressources and thought about taking the “Team-Treehouse Techdegree”, but for someone who is already familiar with the basics of web development, it´s much harder to get a curriculum which suits my needs. In the last 2 weeks on vacation I created a curriculum and plan for me, how I want to become a “real” Full-Stack Developer in 7 months.
Use Udemy courses and w3schools and FreecodeCamp. I have picked some courses.
1. Advanced CSS and Sass: Flexbox, Grid, Animations and More! - This course shall help me to create the first real websites.
2. The Modern JavaScript Bootcamp. Getting to know JS (I already know the basics of JS and since I´m familiar with R a second programming language should be easier to learn in depth)
3. The Complete React Developer Course
4. The Complete Node.js Developer Course.
2-4 will help me to learn JS, Frontend and Backend. R Shiny also allows to use Components from the React Ecosystem, so it might be very useful to learn this.
Mistakes I made in the past when learning to code and what I will do about this:
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Watching passively or just coding along - welcome to the tutorial hell. I will build my own stuff with the topics I learn and share it on Codepen.
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Rushing through lectures and forget everything: Not repeating and applying the stuff I learned. I read a lot about “Metalearning” (in the Book “Ultralearning”) and will try some of the techniques I leared. I will repeat the things I learned the next day and some days later (Spaced Repetion), apply then and use a technique called “Feynman-technique”. I will explain everything I learn to see if I really understood the topic - I gonna create a small YouTube Video to do this.
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No learning habit. The book “Atomic habit” was a gamechanger for me. I understand now how to create habits and this is why I code 7 days a week, besides business trips or vacations. I will learn Mo-Fr for 1 hour and on Weekend 5-10 hours overall, which sums up to 10-15 hours per weak.
I already have some Full Stack ideas which I plan to build for my portfolio: A Stock Prediction App, An App with the Spotify App and an App which allows to type in stuff in your fridge and get suggestions for healthly meals. But to be able to do this, I have to make my homework :-).
If you have any tips, suggestions or just a friendly comment, I appeciate everything!