I started FCC about a month ago and currently working on Basic Javascript. I’m sure this question has been ask numerous times already but here it goes anyways.
My first ultimate goal is to land a Front end Dev job within a year times.
How much time within the day are other campers spending on coding?
I feel like my 2 hours a day plan is not enough and would like to step it up a notch. I understand that everyone learn at a different pace and the path to success is not a clear cut one.
Lastly from searching the forum I will take a look at this helpful guideline.
I know my response isn’t very satisfying (as I haven’t given a straight answer to your question ) but I think a year should be enough to get a developer job if you do put the effort into being the best developer as possible.
To immerse yourself into the coding world as possible, I’d check out
podcasts
local meet-ups
coding communities (e.g. this forum, reddit, Gitter, Slack, etc)
Good luck!
Edit: in terms of goals, you could check out developing SMART goals to have a systematic way to create goals with purpose. SMART stands for goals that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time Bound.
Your goal is realistic if you learn faster than me . Seriously though, you can track your progress by comparing the recommended time by your actual time it takes to complete a section. There will be days where you spend more than 2 hours coding, especially with projects. Just focus on learning the code and you might be done within a year realistically.
I definitely agree Eric with the habit developments, as the achievements will only be the icing on the cake. Increased immersion into this discipline makes total sense also.
I am far behind the estimated completion time. Yes, I believe what’s more important is actually learning and retaining the concepts beside just storming through the lessons.
Here are some podcasts I’ve been enjoying. I just started coding a couple months ago in case you want some context for what I find interesting I’ll list both programming and general tech podcasts.
Sorry for the poor formatting and lack of links. Typed this up on my phone! Also realized after typing this that I used “stuff” in pretty much every explanation
learn to code with me (good beginner stuff)
breaking into startups
work in progress (from LinkedIn about work in general but they have some good tech stuff)
charged (general tech and programming – they also have a good weekly newsletter)
If you want to learn how to code, you need to be coding/making your own projects. That’s how you learn, and that’s how you make what you’ve learned stick to your brain.
It doesn’t matter if the projects are small, silly, simple – but you need to be practicing and applying what you learned into your own very code. That means, writing your own code from scratch. Not copy/pasting, not memorized steps from a video tutorial.
Sorry, but watching endless hours of video tutorials, reading books, listening to podcasts won’t give you the right programmer mindset/computational thinking required to write your own program. These are all “passive” activities, where you’re just learning “facts and syntax”. But what you really want to be a successful programmer is the practical application of those “facts and syntax” to solve a given task/problem you may be presented. – and that can only come from practice, from actual coding, and making your own projects.
Don’t be like students that after endless video courses, or going through numerous exercise tests given at the end of a video chapter, when presented with a unique probem/task still has no clue where/how to begin. – i.e. they say I don’t think I’m learning anything, I have no clue where to begin, I feel like I’ve forgotten everything and need to restart again from Chapter 1, etc. etc
Think of it this way — nobody learned how to ride a bike by watching videos, reading or listening to people on how to ride a bike! The people that learned how to ride a bike are those that really did it, made mistakes, fell down, got up and tried again and kept practicing. It’s the same with programming/coding.
I’d also add these as well to check out to see how you like them:
Software Engineering Radio - podcast for professional software engineers, so it can go into the weeds of some software
The Changelog - they interview project creators and talk about technology
Those are ones I’ve personally listened to as well. If you want other opinions, you can dig a little bit and take a look at these popular podcasts we found from freeCodeCamp’s new coder survey.
) but I think a year should be enough to get a developer job if you do put the effort into being the best developer as possible.
. Seriously though, you can track your progress by comparing the recommended time by your actual time it takes to complete a section. There will be days where you spend more than 2 hours coding, especially with projects. Just focus on learning the code and you might be done within a year realistically.
I’ll list both programming and general tech podcasts.