I started my coding journey around 10 months ago. My older brother is a developer in Brazil (where I am originally from) and he decided he would turn me and our younger brother into developers. After watching lots of Mr. Robot I was super excited! Bring the hacking on, I told him lol
But all he did was share some Code Academy tutorials on HTML and the command line. No hacking at all! =/
But once I started creating my first very simple HTML pages from scratch and adding CSS to them I felt pretty awesome. HTML & CSS are my favorite duo ever! I also learned the basics of UI, responsive coding and a little more advanced CSS (I love CSS) and this all in the first 6 months, studying no more than 45 minutes to 2 hours a day, usually 6 days a week.
Then I found out that my beloved HTML and CSS are not really programming languages :( (Still love them tho <3) and my goal was (and still is) to be a badass developer sooo I started pressing my mentor, a.k.a older bro, to let me Learn Javascript. But he made me learn computer logic instead! If you are a programmer you probably think that older bro is wise because that was a good plan. But I didn't agree you see... I wanted to program!!! Nevertheless, I watched the classes he shared with me (maybe without paying all the attention they deserved) until the end.
Finally, he shared with me a JavaScript course!!! I was soo excited!!! I woke up earlier the next day (I am a morning person, studying at night doesn't work very well for me) to get the course started... And I didn't like it at all! Ohhh the deception. I felt like a failure. I couldn't focus on the lectures at all and didn't learn much to be honest. But younger bro was doing it. I couldn't give up!
Once we got at a certain point of the course, older bro asked us to stop and do a project. I was terrified of course, but in the end, with his great mentoring I did it:
https://pachicodes.github.io/Products/
I was SOOO happy when it was done, even if I wasn't even that sure how I made somethings work, they were working!
After that, we started another course in JS with a different teacher and DUDE WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!! I finished that course way faster and learned stuff. The teaching methodology of this new professor was much better for me and I was actually excited to learn!
Now, I am making this sounds like it was forever ago, but it was actually last month (June 2019) lol. So yes, I a pretty much a newbie. BUT I can code some nice static pages and some basic cool apps in JavaScript.
There are 3 main ways to learn to code: College, Bootcamp, and Self-learning.
·College just never was my thing;
·I love the idea of Bootcamp, but the time commitment and financial investment just don't work for me at this moment of my life.
·Self-learning was my choice. It isn't as well organized as a college or as fast as a Bootcamp, but with a mentor, a plan and dedication it works for me.
On my next post, I will write about things that make it easier to follow the Self-Learning route.
P.s. I would like to Thank Ali Spittel @aspittel for the inspiration. I saw her talk on Blogging yesterday at Codeland 2019 and now here I am, writing!
Top comments (7)
You're awesome darling! Keep going! <3 💕💕💕
You inspire me <3
Learning 45 minutes a day is really good. Keep focused and you’re on path to mastery 💪
Thank you !!
As a person new to coding I loved reading about your journey! Great article
Thank you Soo much, reading it really made me happy! And good luck on your code journey!
Thank you, you too! I've just started learning flexbox and reading into javascript, but I want to be totally comfortable with html & css before I go down that road haha. There's just so many different things out there!