I study language for a living. Specifically, I'm finishing a Master's in Applied Linguistics, and my thesis compares how two AI chatbots — Qwen and Gemini — express political ideology in the way they use language. Ask me about discourse analysis, syntax, or how meaning is constructed in a sentence, and I'll talk your ear off.
So why am I writing this on a developer learning platform? Because in 2021, I started teaching myself to code, and five years later, that "side thing" has become just as central to who I am as the linguistics.
Nick Morrison on Unsplash"/>
A Bit of Context
I never planned to become a developer. My academic path was entirely language-focused. If you'd told 2019-me that I'd spend my evenings trying to solve some coding problem, I would've laughed.
But looking back, the two paths aren't as disconnected as they seem. Linguistics is pattern recognition. So is code. Both come down to structure and logic — figuring out the rules that make a system work.
The Push That Started It
In 2021, a friend of mine enrolled in a frontend development course and started learning HTML. I watched him build his first tags-and-divs page, and something clicked. I'd always been low-key obsessed with technology, the kind of person who reads about new tools for fun, but I never thought of it as something I could actually do.
Seeing someone I knew making progress was the push I needed. We even talked about collaborating and building something together one day. If he could do it, I could at least try.
How I Actually Started
I didn't have a structured plan, and honestly, that's the thing a self-taught person needs most: the right path and someone to guide them. I didn't have that at the beginning. I started the way I think most people do — free tutorials, scattered courses, a lot of trial and error, and an embarrassing number of abandoned projects.
HTML and CSS first. That part was easy, everything felt smooth. Then came JavaScript, and things turned against me. It suddenly got real and a little scary. Luckily, a YouTube course from Ossama Elzero saved me — I highly recommend it if you understand Arabic.
What I've Learned
When you believe in yourself, you can do things you never thought you were capable of. So love what you do, and if you don't yet, fake it until you make it.
Where I Am Now
These days I split my time between finishing my thesis and building real applications:
- My startup idea — I'm working on a startup that needs a web platform, so I'm applying everything I've learned into building it. Whenever I get stuck, I go straight to the community for help and see how other people have solved the same problem.
- A client project — my cousin knew I was a web developer, so I built his web app and solved a problem he'd been stuck with for a long time.
None of these are polished startups with funding and users. They're real projects with real bugs, real scope creep, and real 2am "why isn't this working" moments. But they're mine, and each one taught me more than any course could.
Challenges as a Self-Learner
I won't pretend this was smooth. A few honest struggles:
The road wasn't clear. Self-teaching means you don't know what you don't know. I've had to backtrack more than once after realizing I'd built something on a shaky foundation.
Money. Good paid courses actually build a solid foundation, but as a university student you barely save enough for your own needs, let alone a course — especially with a weak currency. Still, there are plenty of free YouTube courses out there that have made a lot of developers.
Being the outsider. Coming from a non-CS background, it's easy to feel like you're always behind people who started with an actual computer science degree. Most companies I looked at as a web developer wanted that degree, which pushed me toward freelancing instead. I've had to remind myself that shipped, working projects matter more than credentials.
Balancing two demanding fields. A Master's thesis and self-taught development don't leave much room for anything else. Some weeks, one has to lose so the other can move forward.
Why I'm Still Doing This
I could have stopped after the first hard wall — plenty of people do, especially now with AI taking over so much of the work. What kept me going was seeing small, tangible proof that the work compounds: a feature that finally works, a bug that finally makes sense, an app that real people can actually use.
Platforms like Scrimba have been part of that path, especially for someone building this skill set from scratch with no formal CS background and no clear map to follow.
If you're coming from a completely unrelated field and wondering whether it's too late or too different to start building software — it isn't. The skills you already have transfer more than you'd expect. You just have to start.
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