Disclaimer: Iām directly writing it in the editor, so wear your seatbelts before starting, ācuz I donāt know where weāll land.
TLDR; Here are some things that you can learn from my journey, ācuz I know Iām bad at talking:
- Learn in public, start out on Twitter or any other community.
- Donāt start with YouTube, start with something more structured.
- Donāt hesitate to ask and reach out to people when in a problem.
- Follow me on Twitter (couldnāt resist that)
Iāve imagined myself so many times (Iām not weird you also have done so š) getting interviewed, so this should be a smooth ride.
My first introduction to computer was at my uncleās house, played games, and then at my cousinās house, played more games and then at our own house when my mom and dad suddenly got me one, GTA is rad.
The above was me shitting or probably boasting my game and GTA skills (you better not get ahead yourself), the real journey to computers start when I got bored with games and obviously didnāt want to study, so I started playing with the good old Windows XP āprofessionalā, crashed it couple of times set a cursive font as the system font (probably the worst decision of my life š„).
I first coded HTML on a much older PC than myself, I know I said ācodedā, this doesnāt make any sense, right? It sure does to a boy who only played GTA with some cheat codes š„“.
BTW, GTA cheat codes is the best piece of codeā¦ period.
Then after that short first date with programming it obviously didnāt work out, fast-forward 2-3 years and here I am sitting in quarantine ready to learn code.
I started with YouTube and stayed at YouTube for like one and a half year, learned some cool python and hated JavaScript at first, but there isnāt any choice but to love it at the end, obviously those skills looked like shit because of imposter syndrome.
So the first actual learning you can take away with you after reading the above shT, is that Never Ever start programming with YouTube*.
The reason I say this not because the YouTube people arenāt good or the content they make is, they are great, and itās not just Iām saying it they actually are thatās what makes it harder for a beginner. When you see someone so good at programming when you arenāt even able to do hello world, it feels like shit. We just forget that they actually prepare a lot of that beforehand and have many takes making that project or anything.
Also, you can fall into Tutorial Hell, itās terrible and do really exist. I thought I knew what it was and that Iām not falling for it, but I did anyway because thatās actually so tempting.
Itās better to start out with something more structured and reliable solution than YouTube like freeCodeCamp or any other website that you find helpful. Also, itās really helpful if you start learning in public, the community that may look overwhelming at first is really, really helpful and supportive, you canāt believe how many people are ready to help you out or stop you if youāre doing something wrong.
And that doesnāt mean you should never or canāt learn anything from it, you can but be patient, I watch a lot of tech YouTube, but now itās okay because I know what Iām doing.
After I got out of that imposter syndrome and forced myself to recreate the projects without looking at them, going through docs and tech forum, I was finally able to get out of it for good.
Shortly after that, I created a whole CMS for a local business in Django and then remodeled it again with NextJS x tRPC and Prisma. And now Iām doing another project with them where Iāll create them a static landing page and a blogging platform.
So the second thing you should keep in mind, after you get your basics done donāt think that Iām not ready yet aka imposter syndrome, youāre always ready be confident in yourself and just try out.
I said it I didnāt know where weāll land, here I am ranting about my tech journey. So glad that you read it this far.
Iām always open to connect and collaborate, just reach out. š