To Be Honest...
To be honest, I decided that I wanted to be a web developer after graduating. During my time in uni, I didn't really have an idea of what I wanted to do after graduation, so I just went through the motions of uni life without much of a clue. Not having an idea was a massive problem, so I spoke to a friend of mine and she convinced me to walk the path of a web developer.
University?
Since my web dev journey began after graduation, it might look like university wasn't worth it for me. Well it was, and it wasn't.
Was Worth It
University was worth it because it structurally introduced me to the branches of Computer Science (Software Engineering, Database systems, User-Centered Designs, Network Management, Cyber Security). It allowed me the opportunity to test the waters of each branch before deciding, granted I did not jump into any pools.
I learnt a few programming languages during my time in university, went through programming paradigms like object-oriented programming and procedural programming. All this made it significantly easier to pick up new languages as I had to with JavaScript.
Wasn't Worth It
There are a lot of opportunities that are available in Universities. Hackathons, career events, career support, events, societies, opportunities given by lecturers, what have you. All these opportunities are great ways to gain experience, unlock more doors, network, the list goes on. Unfortunately for me, I did not take these opportunities which in my eyes was a form of self-sabotage. Pretty much a frog in a well sort of situation.
Issue...
The issue was I had pretty much 0 experience in web development. I faintly remember a web dev fundamentals module I did back in year one but it became a fuzzy memory. Whelp, no time like the present! I got stuck into the web dev courses in freeCodeCamp:
- Responsive Web Design
- JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures
- Front End Development Libraries
These courses taught me the basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, and other libraries & frameworks. They even had projects to complete at the end of every course, completed those with some degree of success (baby steps!).
freeCodeCamp was great at easing me into the world that is web dev, I recommend it for anyone starting out.
After...
After completing the web courses in freeCodeCamp I bounced around free/paid courses, learning what I could. Some courses worthy of note were the Full Stack UI course, a bit of Svelte, and the NodeJS course from
Udemy made by the amazing Andrew Mead. Why learn back-end?
Because every front-end developer should have some experience with back-end for their personal projects (and vice versa).
AND AFTER THAT, I got stuck into a 100 days of daily UI challenge which involved designing one UI every day, based on a prompt, for 100 days. That took a while. Some of my "best" work can be seen over at Polyworks.
Well...
So that's how I started my web dev journey. I skipped out on all the issues regarding procrastinating, lack of motivation, what have you. Perhaps that'll be for another time.
Presently I'm on day 69 of a 100 days of Threejs challenge. In this challenge, I have committed to learning the Threejs library every day for 100 days. I've already gone through the basics of Threejs (and blender) with the help of Bruno Simon and his course, Threejs Journey. So far I've made a portal scene and a model of my room.
My next project involves going back to secondary school level maths to help me understand the mystery that are shaders.
Till then!
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