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Ekim Kael
Ekim Kael

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how to be self-taught nowadays

The technology is such nowadays that you barely discover something that three days later you are presented with another thing as a miracle cure for what was done three days earlier.
So when you start out, you end up with two camps: those who love the" from scratch" and those who pray to their frameworks 5 times a day and since you don't know anything...argh!!
Personally, I'm one of those people who think you have to go from scratch sometimes, well, if I used to go from scratch today, I understood that it's a waste of time, energy and therefore money.

I used WordPress some time ago to make a blog (like a magazine) and although starting on WordPress I found myself finishing up when I counted the hours of work it took me, not even a week.I don't know WordPress, but I managed to create a child theme, add and model templates from the code.I left PHP it's been over 3 years today for Node and I'm very proud of what I accomplished in such a short time with WordPress.

All this to say that it's nice to want to go from scratch especially when you're just starting out but I recommend this to those who are still young and by young I think of those who are in middle school, high school or who have just entered college.
If you are a little older and you have responsibilities I don't recommend it.learn a framework and learn it well.so that you can solve most of the problems you encounter there.all programming languages have things in common:

  • you declare variables and constants
  • you make loops
  • conditions
  • functions
  • embarks with them most often 2 programming paradygmes: the imperative and the OOP.

What you should always keep in mind:

  • there are many ways to solve a problem

  • STACKOVERFLOW and Google are there for you. remember I said I finished my work in barely a week? it's because of them.

  • Ask questions - You don't want to be the one who doesn't know anything when you can't come up with a problem? can you be stupider than that?

  • You can combine your learning and / or your work with personal development... There are many methods to design an application but if the most known one came to us from architecture is that you can look elsewhere and get inspired to work effectively and not get swallowed up by the work.

  • Find a community - It goes without saying that it should be focused on the domain, the language and the frameworks and CMS you use.

Since then I've been talking but I've just told you that I'm from what sometimes likes from scratch without telling you how I think it's more efficient to work for a self-taught with responsibilities.

  • The most hype language of the moment?the one you've always liked?no matter when you get away with it (both learning it and trying to make a living with it).

  • Once you are there and you already master the elements that all the languages have in common, put yourself to a framework, a CMS etc... Just set yourself a goal with your framework however small it may be, you will learn a lot.

  • After 2 - 3 personal projects with your framework, find out how it works, by this procedure you will gradually go back to the language and learn more about the specificities of it... In the end you will join those who like to go from scratch yes! because they are more likely to master all aspects of their languages and control all the processes of an application they have designed.

In the end you know how your language, your framework works and you can participate in its improvement. it's like starting as a technician to end up as an engineer it's just rewarding as not possible. but I insist on the fact that after mastering the framework you learn how it works.

The technology today is evolving at an exponential speed, I wouldn't tell you not to learn all the details of a language from the start but you have to be efficient and catch up very quickly with the crew of this boat that you took when it already had a lot of miles on the clock.

Thanks to those who read until the end, thank you for giving me your point of view I would be happy to read it.

Top comments (4)

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satansly profile image
Omar Hussain

Most undergrads learn c++ as their first programming language even though its used in very specific situations now. But the point is to have a good understanding of basics of programming with a relatively closer to hardware language without getting into the depths of binary. Having good programming know how allows you to quickly adapt to new languages and frameworks. As a programmer and an appreciator of OOP, the return of functional programming is breaking my đź’”

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ekimkael profile image
Ekim Kael

It's important to have a good foundation that's true, but often some people when they start out already know in which field they want to practice (Web, Games, Desktop Software).
After functional programming and other paradygms it's like trends.like the popularity of some frameworks.
Yesterday we swore by Angular, today by React. So I'd tell you not to worry too much about it.

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satansly profile image
Omar Hussain

I have worked in javascript when prototype was still new. The beginning of OOP in javascript, and it felt right, coming from other languages like c# or java. But the trends are shifting again towards functional with latest js frameworks like react. Although it totally makes sense to have functional programming in javascript since not everything programming related has to be mappable to real world objects. Its only a matter of preference I guess.

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ekimkael profile image
Ekim Kael

Yeah!!