Greetings, i hope everyone who reads this is doing well and taking care in this agitated times.
I’m new to the forum so in advance i want to excuse myself if anything is out of the scope here.
I made this thread because i’m in big need of hearing what people who are already doing well in the programming world can say to help me get this stress out of my head so i can keep going forward in this path of knowledge that is learn to code.
In the following paragraph im going to give a little of context about me, so excuse me if its a bother to read and i’ll try to make it as short as possible.
To put it simply, im a 23 year old student of a Technological University from Tucuman, Argentina. This career is a Technician in Programming. i took it because given the situation in my country and even more in my province, i found myself in the big need of taking an effective career that could allow me to find a proper job and the possibility to travel around the world and dont spend 5 to 6 years stuck in here.
Last year i started from Zero to understand what is code and programming little by little using C# and Visual Studio.
Starting from simple Console stuff like creating arrays to Windows Forms Applications. Making a calculator, a hanged man game and a calendar.
Last thing i have to prepare is a final exam that is called an X-commerce project based on Solid principles and OOP. Which its purpose is to make a Commercial application linked to a SQL database.
Anyway, due to the situation that we are living right now, there are no chances that anything will restart this year at the university right now, and its impossible to do anything but to stay in home. So my point is that i want to continue to grow a lot more now that i have the time and calmness to do so. I really got tired of playing games and watch movies for now, i want to feel valuable and be ready for this when the time calls again to finish this career.
However the more i try to search about programming in 2020 the more i find different paths, knowledges, languages, programs and why you should do Python or Javascript and not C# or viceversa, that people should learn this year and with all this free time avaiable.
The anxiety kinda hits me hard on this as days gets worns out, if anyone can give me a humble piece of advice from heart to heart i’ll be really thankful about it and i apologize for my english if any grammatical error has occurred.
Hi Matias! Anxiety, at least from my experience, is going to be there almost all the time, at least until you learn how to manage it. My mind works like “i must keep doing this in order to achieve this so some day anxiety fades away” but that never happens, so every day I wake up and do something to forget every fear and every thing that happened in the past to focus in the present.
Have you ever worked in something different than coding? Have you ever considered working by yourself instead of working for someone else? Those questions help you create your own future.
I learnt to code in VB6 when i was 12 (now I’m 25) and since then i’ve been learning new languages almost every day. I’m still an aprentice. Even though, I’ve never worked as a programmer. Sure I’ve made some web pages for a little ammount of money. Also I’ve worked coding a platform for a friend’s startup (who sells indumetary) but It only lasted around six months. It helped me a lot, not learning to program, but practicing how to lead a project by myself, and to learn the other faces of programming. What I mean with the other faces is, debug, test, design, even how to negotiate. I ended up doing more marketing than programming. My time was up there and I left, to continue growing. Apart from that, I’ve applied in a few places but I’ve never got hired. That’s 100% my fault, anyways. I wasn’t ready, and I’m not yet.
I could tell you this: you can take an expensive course where they teach you a lot in little time, and then you are recommended by them in different companies. I know some people who have done that. But I haven’t, my goals are others, so I can’t tell you if that’s fully effective.
It’s hard I know. I’m still in the path and never going to stop. You have to be relentless. That’s my advice.
So there is one thing that will always be true when it comes to dealing with tech. Things will always change, thus there will always be more to learn. You could learn C#, Python, JavaScript, etc etc, and tomorrow you could learn some other new and fancy language. Or you can stick with what you already started learning and continue getting better at it. Languages are just tools to build stuff.
If you have anxiety from feeling like there is to much to learn, just take a step back and relax because this wont change, but also isn’t that big of a deal. You don’t need to know X, Y and Z if you just plan on using X. Yea its nice to know X, Y and Z, but lets be serious you only have some much time on this earth, so pick and choose what you feel is right for you at this time.
You can call this anxiety FOMO, or the like. The best way to combat it is appreciate what you do have so far. You are lucky you can spend this time improving yourself, while others are spending this time fighting for their lives, or being unable to make use of all this “extra free time” locked up.
Continue learning what you need for your final exam, maybe pick something else up for the heck of it, but do it because you want to, not because someone said “its the next best thing” or some other shallow attempt at influencing you.
Thank you for your kind words Matias (excellent name). Your mindset is something really good as it involves a certain self discipline that you can apply to yourself, i find that really admiring because for my case, i spent way too much time in my life inside a comfort zone that kept me away from the rails of productivity.
Responding to those questions, i did not find the philosophical answers in its entirety yet. However, i did found motivation when i had an opportunity to live in Spain for 2 years and see how advanced the civilization is to this day and everyday more!
So i told myself that i wanted to be part of that and as a variable to consider, i needed to find a career that allowed me such privilege. Thus i found the programming career as a Technician.
For my experience i never cared, at least to this day, if i had to work for others. I did not had an opportunity nor a situation where i could say that i can do a certain thing by myself and be productive with it, however i do not bow my head and can say that if such opportunity appears i’ll take it without a second thought.
For now i think you are right and maybe i should take this course to the end and try not to stick onto other subjects yet? I mean i’m much of a self thought person, as my english is my very own proof of it, but when the learning path is as open and colorful as a hand fan, i just cant choose where to look.
Thank you once again and i hope that your path brings you loads of fruits because you certainly sound as a determined person worthy of success, such attitude is contagious!
Thank you so much for your words, you are right about it, thinking too much out of the box its more of a torture than a help at the moment, for now i think i’ll stick to what i know and try not to pressure myself too much into it.
I really appreciate your words and wish you the very best as well!
