I’ve got a strange story behind me too detailed to share here at once. All I want to say it’s a relief finally joining after putting off what I KNEW I should have done years ago, 5 years to be exact.
As of now, I’m at an existintial crisis of a sort where I know if I don’t get into the tech/development industry, I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.
I had a “screw everything” event a few weeks back and decided to finally join FCC after reading about it for so many years. The biggest motivator for me was how many success stories FCC has produced, not to mention how warm the community is overall!
My only goals as of now are to break into a web development career and give my effort daily, no matter how long it takes.
I hope to learn a great deal and hope more to be able to give something back to a community as warm as this someday.
For now, I’ll be following my FCC curriculum and possibly supplementing it with Colt Steele’s Web Developer Bootcamp course from Udemy (by some luck, I managed to snag it with a coupon just a week ago.)
What advice could you guys give me so that I can see this through completion? I’ve read somewhat lately of #100daysofcode, and it sounds like the perfect accountability.
I’ll be glad to share what I learn as I go along, thanks again everyone!
Udemy courses are nearly always on sale.
Colt’s bootcamp is great, but the advanced one is, well, not in the same class at all. Avoid that one until you are an expert.
Hi @catrover, my first recomendation is print a banner, write down in a white board, or something that you can see all the time WHY you decided to start walking this journey. So that, your goal and motivation is clear and with you all the time.
Like you said, the community is really helpful, motivates you and for sure pushes the bar when it is needed.
My best advice is to manage your time. Your inspiration will wane at times, so definitely don’t rely on that to keep you going. Rely on discipline. Take a good look at your weekly calendar and figure out exactly when you will be learning/coding, and for how long. Have it add up to a solid 10-15 hours a week (that is if you have a full-time job, if not then you can easily put in 40+ hours a week) and try to do at least a little each day. Set up alarms or notifications on your calendar for those times, and actually take them seriously. Coding alarm rings? Turn off netflix and open that code editor or udemy course. And don’t close them until another alarm doesn’t dismiss you. Obviously sometimes other events come up and you can’t code during your designated time, but these ought to be rare enough that they don’t compromise your routine.
Maybe this is weird, but it’s something I started doing myself recently and seeing great progress. I’ve been learning web dev for ~2 years, but at a very slow pace. Too slow. Only now do I feel like I’m actually moving at a respectable pace. Good luck to you!
As a newbie, I really appreciate the detailed things you’ve laid out here from your own experiences.
I know at the back of my head that things are going to get harder and the “honey moon” phase will come to an end, but I have a proverbial gun to my head and hope to put in a solid work ethic for the next year or so.
For me, my biggest goal as of now is to eventually get a career in web development in tech. I’ve read amazing things about how people have done it, and even if they’re statistics, I’m hoping to do my best to become a part of that amazing journey. I hope you make great progress and achieve whatever your goal with learning web development is too, mate!
I’ve had about half of my life, and at 48 learning more to get into the tech industry. If you are much younger than I am, maybe you are worrying a bit too much, but it’s good that you have a clear aim.
Yes, so something every day, even if it only a few lines of code ore reading something.
Don’t rush it just to get it done. Your learning will suffer. Take a bit of time to do a challenge and then do it yourself, trying not to look at the example as much as possible in an independent code editor. Atom and Visual Studio Code are good, free editors. Install a live server extension so you can see the page update as you save changes.
As for my age, I’m about to turn 29. I’ve put off essentially my entire career and feel a lot regret. I’d always felt sad about my future prospects knowing I have little (useful) job experience and no degree (got into accounting when I was 20, but studying it felt like eating peppered snails everyday).
From my understanding, the web development career is competitive, but I felt I have nothing else to lose anymore. I wish I’d started at 24 but… Who knows…
It’s motivating to see even at 48 you’re determined, thanks for the encouragement and advice.
@catrover I would like to see it from this perspective: once you finish your learning path, you will have some experience on two areas: accounting and web development, that might be an interesting value add for an employeer or perhaps you might start working on a personal initiative and start your own business.
By the way, I am 39yo and am learning web development from scratch to switch career.
