As a 20 year dev a big piece of advice, if you get stuck for ages on one tutorial, find 5 others on the same subject, either blog posts, videos, sample apps - all of the above and keep approaching the subject from multiple angles. One of them will click.
Been stuck with fixing some f**ed up quaternion math at work for nearly a month and only managed to fix it after digging into books for a couple days💀 Patience and confidence are main parts of success!
@@ruslan_yefimov Yeah, this is so true. The devs on my team lose so much time because they want the quick and easy solution, when it would be much quicker to do a deep dive into the issue and get a good understanding before attempting a solution. The worst is when someone on my team tried to trial and error a solution for 2 weeks, I take the task over from them, and find the solution after 30 minutes of reading the documentation with patience.
Agree. I was trying to implement minimax but I just couldn't understand the code. So, I read more about it and I could finally manage to understand how it works and hence, I implemented it myself without understanding their code.
As a person who is at 6 month mark, I can approve that learning programming is frustrating. No endaviour ever in my life made me doubt myself this much. Despite all the frustration I just embrace the chaos and keep pushing.
At this point I just don’t care, I do any entry task, take any test, just anything. Still nothing. Even if I don’t get any programming job in 1-2 years, I still won’t stop programming. Maybe this career is not for me. I thought maybe it was, but reality disagrees. Sometimes circumstances are just not right. But I’m done with beating myself up over this. I’ll just keep trying whatever I can, until I go insane. I can feel the need to do this
You studying by yourself or taking classes? I ended up doing both and honestly, I can say I learned a great deal in both paths 🤔 so if one’s not working out, definitely consider the other 😊
I've been learning for almost 4 years, and it has been a long journey and I don't think it will ever finish, I got my first programming job like at a year and a half after I started learning but unfortunately my boss was abusive so I decided to take the freelance route, I really love to have all the time I want to learn new and more advanced topics, and also to have the entire freedom to apply my knowledge in the projects I want
My biggest advice for anyone who is taking any sort of coding course (it doesn't matter if you are taking courses from Udemy or Coursera or BootCamp): build something on your own. For example, if you are taking React course, after learning how to build a reusable button component, pause the course and start building a button component on your own, you will realize that you might not be able to make it even though you just learned it, if you can make one, try to make 10 of them differently, repetition is the key. While you are progressing through the course, pause again, and make everything that has been covered on your own again. Do this over and over you will remember and learn the patterns, therefore by the time you are making your own project, you could apply those patterns.
I think this is great advice. I'll add that I think what is a good approach to this is to think about what things you'd like to be different, whether that be organization of the code presented or application/UI behavior. Ask "what can I remove from this example, or how can I simplify this?". Ask "can I make this code more portable/re-usable?" Mutating code and refactoring are essential exercises to understanding. And a lot of professional work is mutating and refactoring code anyway, so put reps into doing that!
That is the gruelingly difficult part for me - do the actualn unguied work, when your mind is blank and blanketless of the cosy validation of code-monkeying the tutorial cose and reapplying it to similar concepts, now irl.
This is something I started doing recently, I take something programming related and start experimenting with it unti I got it down. Right now as funny as it is, I hardly incorporate Boolean values in my code so I'm searching up different scenarios to use them and coming up with my own versions to practice with them.
dude, I'm not new on this developer journey. I have been working as a developer for 7 years, and let me tell you something, I wish I have heard all of this since the beginning! Thanks for your comments, this is a hard to swallow pill of reality, but, we all need it.
I’m a professional developer now, bout 10 years, and if there’s one piece of advice I could give…skip those goofy book exercises and take the jump into writing an actual program that uses an actively used API or framework. But in all honesty, being a good developer really is kind of a “journey”. I’ve been a system administrator, got my A+, and it wasn’t till after getting my computer science degree, a few years, EVERYTHING I learned started coming together ❤❤❤ It takes time! so long as you’re moving upwards with each new week/month…I wouldn’t worry 😂❤ 💻
Definitely mirror your experience! Also, these videos of also highlighted that TikTok is presenting a weird way of looking at the whole profession. In the 90s, when I started, it was all about just wanting to be good enough to work at Microsoft, as a system level developer. Nowadays, it’s all web. Don’t have to worry about memory management as much now.
It's a good advice, and a bad one. Even after a few weeks (depending on the time invested) some people cannot write one line of code that makes any point in a big picture of a project. Without basic things, people just write stuff without understanding or, even worse, copying code. Depending on the project, you sometimes need 3-4 different subjects from different languages or frameworks. So it is not as easy as you described.
I'm self-taught. Bought PHP for Dummies in 2002. Read for cover to cover and made the examples, took me 3 months. Then I created my own CMS and started a company in 2003. Very quickly I started to make serious money. But it's not all roses. Staying motivated - self-motivated - is extremely hard. Focus is also very hard. Create environment where you will not get distracted. Have kids? Better get an office out of the house. One weird thing: I used to smoke. The I stopped smoking and my focus was gone. Turns out many years later some research was done on micro-pauzes. The smoking was giving my brain micro-pauzes all the time. Micro-pauzes let your brain catch up to what you are doing. It is extremely important in coding and staying in the flow. I still have nto found a good alternative to get those micro-pauzes back (but also still don't smoke so that's good I guess). 20 years later, it's a good career BUT with AI and AGI around the corner you might think twice about being a developer in certain areas. AI is already doing part of my work for me. It's going fast.
Maybe take deliberate short breaks to stretch your feet, walk, brainstorm, even chill or play a game for a planned time frame. If you're into less-unhealthy habits that are still unresearched and probably not healthy for you, vaping is probably better than smoking and provides that short break but I'd never recommend that to someone who managed to ditch smoking. Interesting point btw, I'll find that research.
I'm not oblivious to how hard the self-taught path is....but as a blue-collar worker, I'm miserable and I've realized that this isn't the life for me.... and I lack the money for college, so I'm going the self-taught way... and as hard as it can be, I'd still rather struggle through learning to be a software developer rather then to stay at this dead-end job being unhappy. I started learning by self teaching just a month ago, but learning it and dedicating at least 3 hours a day to studying and working on my skills has really distracted me from the negative thoughts. So I'm honestly just trying to discipline myself to keep at it . I'm hoping I can make this a career even 2+ years down the line.
Hey man, I saw your comment yesterday, didn't replied to it... I took my first IT job after 2 years of preparation, Main reason was I made a lot of mistake when I was starting, Some advice I'll give you that, read almost all the major topics of the framework/programming language you are reading, Create your own software program cause it'll give you actual knowledge in the thing you are reading, and after that revise and Try to take as many interviews as possible, it'll give you idea where you are lacking and also gradually you'll get a job.... It's been 3 months, I don't know if you quit reading/preparing but if you did quit, start again, it won't matter much
I have been a software developer for more than 15 years and I still do "personal", open-source projects. It is _fun_ and it gives me a lot of professional satisfaction. (The job is to make a living). I have a CS degree, but I never stopped teaching myself, I advise everyone to do the same.
@prettyboishah2898 In Romania, where I live, one degree is paid for by the Government (by the tax-payers, in reality, of course), so YES is the answer in my country.
Man this video really came at a perfect time for me. Been teaching myself to code since November last year and started applying to job since late April. Yesterday I received yet another rejection after my third interview and I started questioning myself a lot. As you said it is a number game, I have probably sent close to 150-200 applications and yet only had 3 interviews. When you put things like this it feels like nothing but I am trying to look at it in a way that I am still getting some interviews, which means that it is doable and now it is just about getting better at selling myself and my skills during the interview. Not many people talk about how finding a job is probably the hardest part in becoming a dev and how long it actually takes so I appreciate you making this video to talk about it, brought my spirit back up !
Sorry about the interview rejections, but reaching to the interview stage after 6 month of self study is no small feat either. I'm sure one of these days you'll clear an interview. You're much closer to getting a job than most of us are. Goodluck 👍
@@smallstar88 As someone who did both a bootcamp and a CS degree. I would say that even though college is a scam because they make you take so many pointless classes including the CS classes, they give you structure and time to absorb the stuff. The bootcamp was literally a waste of time and I've never met someone who went to a bootcamp who was actually a good developer. If you believe you can learn everything you need to know in 3 months, starting from scratch, you're delusional. It's a bigger scam than college. They prey on people who are desperate and teach them all the same BS in 3 months or less and say good luck. If I could do it over I would be fully self taught or go to college as I planned for a couple of a years and after getting that foundation, drop out and become self taught. I am working as a dev now and coding in my free time for the last 6 months and have learned infinitely more on my own than anything college/bootcamp taught me.
Thanks, man. Really needed to hear this. Your first point really helped me. I quit my god awful job 6 months ago hoping that I'll land a developer job in 5-6 months of self learning, but honestly, I'm nowhere close and now it's taking a toll on my mental health. Sure, I've made a lot of progress and learned a ton of things, but I still don't feel confident enough. I'll go with your suggestion and adjust my expectations accordingly. Thanks once again.
In your case, you not feeling confident means you are competent. Don't give up. J.Cole said "follow your heart and you'll make that [money/peace of mind/wealth] fast."
i'm in the same boat basically. I quit my job at the beginning of this month- i'm coming up on a year of self teaching, but really losing some steam. haven't applied to jobs yet because I don't feel ready still. I have a gig still as a contractor making wordpress sites for a computer repair shop near me, but that just demotivates me more. I hate using wordpress and i hate the drag and drop site builder. the job is essentially a design job, but extremely constrained since the company only uses one wordpress theme. I'm not a designer, and so far I don't think the shop is happy with my work (there are also issues with their management and whatnot- no adherence to the timeline I'm given in my contract, boss going in and doing large amounts of work or changing work I've done, etc) I would be happier making the sites using wordpress with react as a headless cms, but I don't have enough experience with react yet. I'm grateful to still be living with my family so my bills aren't going to destroy me, but I am running out of time on my goals. I wanted to get a job in germany this year, before the summer. I need to in order to make my relationship work (ldr german gf of 10 years not willing to do ld any longer)
Hmmmmm.... I know what you're saying, but it's not necessarily true. In the early days, when the software industry was just starting off and had very few people in it, the money was flowing! There's so many people in the software industry today - it's heeeeeeeuge!!! Today, it's very common for companies to simply find software developers in markets where wages are peanuts.
@@MnemonicCarrier I know business owners who did that and regretted it, there were time differences and huge communication difficulties. He ended up paying for something he couldnt use and had to start from scatch with local developers. If you're a massive business and have the money to hire project managers who would manage these projects it's still challenging but you might pull it off, but again you will need to make that big initial investment in local people who will push the people overseas and make things happen. The phrase "you get what you pay for" didn't come out of nowhere.
@@BillClinton228 I recall those days. Many moons ago, I worked for a bank that outsourced a project to an offshore company for an overnight batch-processing system. It took over a year and cost a small fortune, and in the end, it couldn't be used because it took longer than 24 hours to process a single business day's worth of transactions.However, things have come a long way since then - those days are long gone. Of course you can still find stories about offshore software projects that spectacularly belly-flop, just like you can find horror stories about ludicrously expensive local projects that fail. My point was more about the "supply-and-demand" equation - something the software industry is not immune to. I started my career in software development in the late 1970s - back then I got paid obscene amounts of money for doing very little. Towards the end of my career, I had to work like a dog for much less money (inflation/CPI adjusted). Thankfully, I managed to strike it lucky with a couple of startups, so I exited the software industry and did my own thing 😄
Thank you so much for this video bro. I've just been on the grind for almost a year, built my first "acceptable" project and got into that pit of desperation, heavy impostor syndrome and lots of self-doubt, but after watching this video i felt that it wasn't all in vain and I got a surge of new motivation. If you're reading this, you can do it! let's go!
There's a bit of a personal identity sacrifice if you pursue it full time. When you get to the age of people associating you with your career (25+), it's awkward to explain. You could say you're learning to code, but you're unemployed. Something I never heard talk about
@@Chuckichanly I am older than that and have no shame in being unemployed while learning to code, and yes I do tell people I 'work in tech' as freelancer no further questions after that 😂😂its your life and do what you want with it
I used 3+ years with heldp from: My second son on it's way, that I took care while my wife went back to work after maternity. I started a "soloprenur" startup that failed big time, from that time. You know what happened when I took the plan down after almost a year trying to sell my SAAS project? 0 money, but and interesting CV with real experience. After I closed operations I got an interview at 45yo 2 months later. Month later I had a junior web dev job. That was 4 months ago. I can't explain how many of the things I learned trying to start up my SAAS helped me survive and hold my job till today. I can say I am doing great at job and got a promotion 2 months into the job. It's weird breing a 45yo jr. But I don't care. I love this job, and it shows.
Back in 2017 I did this exact thing after graduating with a degree in software development... I quit my customer service job that I hated; took out a loan to get by for three months... And I ended up landing 0 programming/ developer jobs. 😂 Financially it was a horrible choice but mentally it was the break I needed. I ended up going into IT/ entry cybersecurity after everything. I'm back to being a self taught developer to become a cybersecurity engineer. Thanks for the advice. 👌🏻
I’m an aspiring front end developer. I’ve been teaching myself for just over a year and I just want to thank you for this video. I’ve definitely watched all the videos where people say they landed a junior role in 3 months, 6 months , 9 months and here I am at the 1 year mark. However I do look over my progress and am impressed with the projects I’m able to make on my own now compared to the beginning. I know I need to keep learning and building better projects
Yooo that's literally me rn I been doing it for a year and I feel like I'm going in circles but I can see my progress, would you be interested in doing some stuff together talking about web designs and layouts? I been looking for people to talk to about front end topics I've been solo throughout my journey
For frontend development you flat out need a solid portfolio of projects to demonstrate, schooling and even beginning resume tech work don't seem to cut it in this hyper competitive era with all the frontend frameworks popping out!
'Get your hands dirty' is a good advice. I started college with almost zero coding knowledge and our first language was c++. As soon as the basics of OOP course was over we had to build a project with c++. It was very confusing at first but building stuff (and suffering) really makes you learn. Learning the basics of the new language and then building something with it has been a very useful model. "wtf is happening" is a VERY effective way to learn coding and debugging lmao.
I took 30 minutes of free time to watch this, and I needed it. I am going down the self taught path right now. It has been very taxing with work and family, but I take a look back every time I get frustrated to where I started or where I was a week ago. Thanks for the "fuck your motivation" bit I got a good laugh and it's true.
Liked and Subscribed! I am a Frontend Developer going through job search phase and I could not agree more with all the things you mentioned, especially about removing emotions from this whole experience. I literally realised this 2 days ago and wrote it in my journal to remind me of this daily. Thanks for making this video. Back to my search...
It is in fact right that the "drinking for a firehose" bootcamp approach is not ideal. We all know what the ideal path is... starting on your own, then studying coding in high school, then CS at a good college with a great teacher. A bootcamp is not the ideal path, it s the best solution to a big problem: I want to start a career as a software dev but I do not have years to do it. Also I believe that the "all of nothing" and "total immersion" that the bootcamp forces you to do is in fact beneficial is some respects... When people pushes themselves so hard something clicks inside them. Something of great value . (Hopefully something does not break inside them as well :P)
Wow thanks man...even with a Bachelor in IT i am having trouble finding a job right now...makes me feel like it's worth nothing. But you just gotta keep on going and having faith in yourself. Best advice
After 2 years of constant studying I got my first job and current job as a developer in may 2022. Motivation isn't really there everyday as stated in the video. You just have to put in the work even if 1 hour a day. Just do it.
I have been a software developer for over 10 years now. I think tutorials can be helpful, but like you say, nothing can replace just creating stuff, making mistakes along the way. I am not the sort of person who is able to just read a book or watch a TH-cam video and fully understand the concepts straight away, it takes iteration until you finally understand. Even as an experienced software developer who moves to another job, you will go back to feeling a bit like a beginner again, but stick at it, most employers won't expect you to hit the ground running on day 1 and will expect a bit of onboarding time. Don't be afraid to ask questions of senior developers, a lot of people are happy to help.
Even with being in a bootcamp, I feel like I have to supplement A LOT of information on my own, even though it’s somewhat a linear path. And i feel like I don’t know ‘more’ (?) than before but I constantly remind myself where I was 4 months ago.
@@Words-of-encouragement.-. I've actually taken a hiatus and focusing on my job at the moment. I took Nucamp's backend course and it was a great introductory course I would say. Since it's completely virtual and only meet on Saturdays, you don't really cover as much material as other in-person bootcamp. It's way cheaper though, so if you want to get your feet wet, please do! And they have a great community
@@androschizo Thank you so much for answering! I did look into Nucamp (as well as many others), but I decided on going to the bootcamp at my university (University of Texas) so I am enrolled already, but I don't start until 3/27. Best of luck to you my friend. I hope you get to wherever you want to go!
Man, this is definitely going into my list of go-to videos! I'm no doubt in the minority here, since I'm retired and have no plans to get hired for anything anymore. But I do a lot of data extractions and custom reporting for different companies as a solo freelancer, and I've been trying to learn C# for the longest time. Always something that gets in the way though, but I'm going to have another go at it and apply these suggestions. Subbed!
This is just phenomenal advice for ANY beginners in ANY field. You have just laid out the proper strategic outlook that is applicable basically in any endeavour that requires producing or engineering. You've got yourself a new subscriber
This has to be the best coding advice I've ever heard. Thanks for posting. I started with the fundamentals and now I'm doing my own projects and it's such a big win when I write code that works and when I can troubleshoot an issue and solve it. I still do some tutorials, but then I'll follow up with a project of my own to really understand and remember it.
this is a meta truth. applies to everything. motivation is unfaithful and will leave. what sticks is what matters and that is discipline aka doing things in spite of lack of motivation.
Hi Don, I've been all over the place with Software development. Originally started with Data Science because I saw the Google analytics and started by learning MySQL and eventually Python. After a month of Python, I feel in love with coding and jump into HTML and CSS for web development. After a month of learning these 2 things I jumped into the CS50 Harvard course which is free for 4 weeks. Found out I hated writing code in C and left the course. Played around for 1 month and a half with Java, Kotlin, Swift, Python again and finally returned to web development learning JavaScript. Got the fundamentals down with JavaScript. Recently picked up PHP to use alongside JavaScript. For the simple fact I see everyone learning the MERN stack. Figured why not go with older tech which most companies use? Now at the moment I just started learning React. So far since I started with Data Science my learning path in total has been 11 months. I figured out after all this time I love 2 things web development and mobile. Figured I will focus 100% on web development and later try mobile. Just wanted to share my crazy learning path and how I figured out what I want. Excellent video and very helpful.
Bro if you didn't like cs50 fundamentals with C, you don't like programming. Because in the course and specially with C you learn what is going under the hood, how memory works, what is the stack, the heap, what are variables, arrays, linked list, hash tables etc. And when you make a program in C, specially cs50 projects and labs you feel so empowered that when you go to python it feels like cheating
You're jumping around too much, stick to one thing: frontend or backend. Btw after week 4 in CS50 you no longer really use C, you missed out on Python, SQL and stuff about HTML, CSS and Javascript lol.
@@karl4813 That was 6 months ago and I stopped jumping around. I am only focused on one thing. But it is never too late. I am in the process of creating my first CRUD app and after I complete my project and feel comfortable with a couple of projects under my belt. I will complete the CS50 Course. To be honest? Deep down what scared me with using C was the garbage collection issue. I kept on thinking if I don't clean out the memory I will damage my computer. But I think it was because I didn't know any better. But thanks for letting me know about the remainder of the course.
@@DevlogBill Damage computer? You're supposed to use the browser version of VS Code so the C program doesn't run on your computer but on their server through the cloud, it's horribly slow at times but it saves you the headace of dealing with these issues with backend languages that can potentially damage your computer.
@@karl4813 I was using the online version but I also was using Eclipse on the side. Did you know you could run C programming on X-CODE? But X-CODE isn't all that great for running C. Kept on running into compilation errors.
I'm a self taught backend developer, with no actual experience for now. Some things that worked for me was to start with the fundamentals, then building my own projects. The projects will also help you focus more, spend more time doing research, but also showing to the recruiters that you can build something by your own. I had built a few websites, but realistically I know its going to be hard to be noticed without a degree, some companies are just like that. I just hope I land a job and get experiences, because its hard to find a junior position job, if you have no prior experience and degree.
Already-in-the-market developer here. Love what I'm hearing so far, definitely take his advice. Don't expect motivation to fall down from a tree, and don't rely on it to stick to your plans - as he says. _Nothing_ worthwhile is going to be easy to do, you won't find any "free passes" like that. But stick with it, programming is really kind of "objectively" a good choice; getting into tech will make you understand more about how our current world actually works, and know that we're just falling deeper and deeper into digitalization.
4:27 on point bro, this learning path is a roller coaster not as school that if you remember some shit you get a star on the head(the path is linear and very limit). By using different technologies or been on different teams when working as a SW "whatever_role" or for personal projects we start at 0 again sometimes even when we "already know"
Thank you for giving it straight, no one really gives you a simple answer about this when you first start out, they all say "do a boot camp" "Become full stack" etc. Setting the expectation and example right at the start of the video was nice. Some days suck, some days are great, but everyday no matter what i say "I have to code".
I started doing the self-taught route, but decided on doing an Associates degree that combines programming with a business systems approach. I can learn a lot while doing my own projects as I go along. Degree is still in progress but having a taste of everything has helped me figure out I want to go the mobile application pathway.
While I’m ashamed to admit it, some a the coolest lessons I’ve learned in programming actually came from my university’s courses 😂😂 As much as I detest school lol 🏫
As someone who is almost done with my CS degree. I found this helpful and useful information. I also find myself having to relearn the basics. Also, the life lesson really help clicked for me, he kept it real. You gotta commit to blocking out time. I run away from that because I always want to be motivated to do tasks, but that is not how the world works. Which is why I fail to be consistent with my health choices and career goals. Thank you.
I have an interview in 30 mins, and I found this video very comforting and super helpful. The "introduce yourself part" and "talk about your role" as a Senior Software Engineer gave me confidence. Also, it feels so much better knowing that not all Sr. SWE are have 10+ years of experience and debunks the myth that interviews have to be so stiff. Please make more of this kind of videos! Thanks! just joined your discord group!
I enjoyed the realness in this video. Thank you for putting it together. It's very refreshing and it's helped put some things in a different perspective for me as someone who's self-learning how to program. Is it weird that one of the things I'm enjoying the most is all the different keyboard shortcuts that are available to use? Learning and using them as I go motivates me. Just a random weird quirk I guess.
Building right away makes you learn so much more and solidify the stuff you already learned. My JavaScript teacher let us make up some of our own projects and I decided to make a short text based game. I ran into so many problems along the way and I learned so much from it. It helps you break away from just following tutorials (even if you have to look up solutions or you copy and paste someone else’s code you’re still learning).
This is a really motivating video Don. You are thrown so much info when starting as a self taught learner it’s hard to pick out the facts/good advice from all the rubbish 🙂 appreciate it
I am a self-taught UI UX Designer. what his saying is the real deal. it took me 2 years to learn how to design and find a job... his telling the real thing, its hard it will take time and you must do it when you dont feel like it. peace!!
I have just found your channel and can already tell how useful it will be. One thing I find useful is to copy paste something like a calculator, then open a tab next to it and hand type it in, googling what it means, then when I run it and it works, I delete it and do it again, relying on the copied version less and less until I find it boring and can advance.
Watched this video yesterday, I’m an aspiring developer and I have been watching videos, going from Udemy back to TH-cam watching crash courses. I always felt like all I am learning isn't landing in my head, but I give 2 - 3 hrs learning until yesterday. After watching this video I went to sleep with the thoughts of what @DonTheDeveloper has said, woke today and I launched my VS and started applying what I learned with only the thought of just start coding, anything or something whether good or bad, right or just start. It took me several hours with no idea where to start but I did start eventual and I must say the feeling in me, it is amazing, it is not much but to me the step reminded me how much I really loved to obtain this skill, how much I always wish to be a coder. Thank you for this video, I really appreciate it, stay blessed.
This is what I really needed to hear. The truth is when we are being self taught, we don't need motivation. To be honest we just need the determination to torture ourself. By that I mean, there are times when we absolutely don't want to code. Success lies in the dedication you have, when you feel a duty to code even if you want to do something else. Motivation is temporary, we need to find dedication!
This reminds me of a friend I was able to mentor who was teaching himself to code and getting discouraged. His family was frustrated with his aspiration and being discouraging. He asked me to look at his projects, I was impressed for the time he spent learing. I told him it would be an up-hill battle to land that first job, but he was definitely employable! I gave him some interview advice and told him to keep at it. Within a few months he landed that first job! Don't take negative feedback from people who are clueless. Find a mentor if you can. Dont give up!
Been learning for about a year now, and it's been a mix of everything. One minute I feel on top of the world because my quiz app is working, next minute I don't think I'm going to ever get a job. But I'm not stopping. It's not a linear path, it's not up or down, it's everything.
I smiled the whole time listening to this. Great advice. I’ve learned early on I have to apply what I’ve learned almost immediately. Those time staring at a black page not knowing where to start will begin to disappear after a while
My issue with escaping tutorial hell is trying to figure out what I should make. Every time I have an idea, I decide it is either; Too easy a task so it will not help me learn, nor look good on my resume, OR, Too much effort to be worth making because someone has already done it before about as well as it could possibly be made... It's easy to tell myself that anything is worth doing if it gets me experience, but then I get caught on whether I could be spending my time better as I (as a self taught aspiring dev) have no feedback to confirm whether I am on the right track.. This has been a long road and it is going to be a lot longer, I don't want to waste TOO much time doing projects that aren't as effective as something else I could be doing just as easily.
I can understand you pain man, i have been learning python for 2 years and till this date i don't know how to practically apply for loops and while loops, also I'm weak at functions
In general, part of the advice he gives - accept that you'll waste time, and go for it. Make things others have made, and try to mimic them if you must. Figure out the little things they had to fix when someone broke it by doing the unexpected. Realize that every project builds upon the prior, and this self experience is how you actually advance. Just do it, quickly.
This video is gold for me. I am currently going through this self-taught process as well. I do not believe that there are shortcuts like 3-6 months to a full-time junior dev job especially when the preparation of portfolio and (technical) interviews AND finally getting hired is gonna take a few months for some of us, much less to say the time required to pick up the different coding languages and skills. Yes, there will be a few talented individuals that can make that possible but not the path is not going to be as straightforward for most of us. I totally agree that staying disciplined is so important because there are really just days that you feel stuck, dumb, and unproductive but the whole idea is just to show up every day.
I am a self taught developer who has two years of experience now working in industry. I would say that my tips are to learn through building. I may have some knowledge gaps that can always be filled later when it comes to theory and comp sci fundamentals but I built my knowledge through starting and finishing bigger and bigger projects.
The comment "What would you have built for yourself back when you started?" unlocked a ton of memories and basically reestablished the ground work for me to get back into the thick of it. Forget motivation and just do it. Whole heartedly agree! Thank you for the video :D
Dear sir, I am grateful for your encouragement. Although I was hired as a backend developer last year, my tenure lasted only three months due to the company undergoing a restructure, which resulted in me losing my job. Nonetheless, that experience gave me a glimpse into the industry, and I am eager to pursue more opportunities. You earned a sub.
At least now you have it in your CV, that you had this job even for 3 months. And you have a viable excuse for loosing it (even if they fired you for finding you incompetent, you can still present it as "company was shrinking"). Do you see any difference now in how your job applications are treated, compared to your applications before you had that 1st job?
Totally agree that you should have money saved up. I was only able to go hardcore bootcamp + learn to code mode because I moved back in with my parents, had money saved up, and worked my ass off before I ran out of money. I disagree with “you got to take a little bit of a break”. Time is the enemy. Front load the work. 99% of people have nothing better to do than work harder.
pure facts. I sent around 60-70 applications before getting two interviews. One interview was literally a vocab quiz on OOP (no coding challenges) and the other was canceled without any reason . I think there is also the aspect of getting past the Invisible HR wall that merely just looks over your application when they don't see CS degree or bootcamp on your resume. I truly believe self-taught devs have to be above Junior level especially if over a certain age as Ageism is also very real in the tech world.
@10:00 I've always struggled with consistency. I definitely have always relied on motivation rather than discipline. I struggle with keeping up with disciplining myself long term, I definitely plan on changing that soon since I would really like a better job!
When I first started to take a professional path down development, leveraging tutorials to build a personal project (for work) totally helped me reinforce the concepts I was learning and it allowed me to think/research how to tweak it to what I want. Its was awesome, the team loves the application.
Man learning any creative skill is litterally the same process Watch introduction to the topic and get intrested Research the best tools and choose a tool Watch a tutorial on the tool you are going to be using and apply it Now Watch few more until you feel a little confident then try changing small stuff to make it your own Now try copying a simple project if you got stuck you search for how to do specific info Now after a long time of doing this you will finnally be able to create and invent personal projects that might be uniqe This is how i learned Digital art yea it took 2/3 years until i was able to make stuff 100% from imagination after not being able to draw at all before Now i want to do the same for coding but i didn't be consistient cuz i jumped bettwen softwares/lanugages /frameworks Im just gonna be focusing now on one language which is rust
I just came across your video and got to say I'm VERY impressed, it's one of the best video I've ever watched since I started out my Java learning path. I've enrolled in Java Bootcamp, paid 1 grand for it, and just finished it. The indifferent point of view I received was from the instructor. He told me that the "projects" is not necessary and it's not required to get a job (in my country, it's possible to get job without project, but it's tough). However, despite his criticisms, I move forward to take on my own projects, and tbh, it's extremely fun. I can apply all the things I've learned from the Bootcamp into the projects and it works!! I don't care people will use it or not, all I care is when the Hiring Managers ask me what can I do or bring to the table, at least I could direct them to my github account.
Applying all over the U.S is what I am planning on. No gf or wife or kids... Just a operations job now and finishing a CS degree. I know that even when I get my first job, it's still going to be really rough. People don't want to train/mentor new hires, especially in this field. You would think there would be some kind of of apprenticeship program in this field but it's feeling more like a circus 🎪. But one day, when I feel comfortable with whatever CRUD application I'm working with, I'll hopefully feel all this BS was worth it lol 🤣
I've 25 years experience, now a lead data engineer. This is an excellent video!!! I felt like an imposter for 20 of those years. I realize that I was my own biggest roadblock all along, too. Occasional laziness delays me from learning something new. Still human, I suppose.
Man this podcast has an immense value, I still don't know how I keep coding thanks god I have a job that I don't hate but the thoughts of just giving up software engineering carrier wont stop, I definitely will quit this tutorials, thank you a ton you have no idea how much this episode means to me.
Good video! I'm a self-taught Dev and I'm now in my 7th year as a Dev 3. I had coded off and on but not as my day job in IT for last 20 years until I jumped from mid level solutions egineer into a Dev 3 role and found was in over my head for a while but I can learn fast and that always save me. You never know everything you need when you start a role but as long as you can grow in to it. My lucky break came when a manager at my company who had taken a new role at a startup our parent company had seed funded and needed someone she could trust and learn on the fly. She was a really good judge of character! My boss left the company several ago and I've had 3 bosses since then and I'm still here and most don't even know I'm self-taught. :-) A word of caution about my story... I'm really good at backward engineering systems and frameworks and I've pretty much been fixing legacy apps for most of my 7 years. I rarely get to build anything new but get to work on a wide variety of languages and frameworks that will be good for my next job move to cybersecurity. 🙂
i'm a 16 year old data scientist intern from India, and it's so frustrating finding the edge to get the first internship. specially with the unemployment here, i took 2 days to build a goo resume tweaking and writing powerful verbs, following everying expert advice i got, however i recently got an internship opportunity in a company from saudi, and things are better. i wish the hype of data science gets lessen because it will improve the job market !, anyway nice video don
lol the part about motivation is so true, i just do things even if im not in the mood to do them because the alternative is nothing would ever get done
18:57 "What even got you excited about coding?" This really hit me. I have seen the thumbnail of this video a few times before, but for some reason I didn't click it. Maybe I didn't want it to hit me so hard. I'm glad I clicked it this time.
Thank you so much for this. Really helped me get back on track on myself. Im about to graduate as a CS major in may and i have not passed any internship interviews or even gotten calls back for sooo many jobs ive applied. A bit nervous to because most of the sruff they aks for i wasnt taught in school so i have been self teaching myself on the side. I almozt gave up but thank yku this video ready just slapped me in the face to tell myself its all in my head. 🙏
The way I see it, 2 years is going to pass no matter what. If we want it from our soul, we stay the course and don't give up. All the work put in, why throw it away?
I became a web developer because I had to. I was in the US Navy and made the IT of the location I was at. And they said I was also in charge of maintaining the web site. This was back in 1999 and I had not even been online yet. So I learned how to view the source code. I would find a site with a feature I liked. Then would look at the code to figure out what part of the code did what on the site and then implemented that into my web pages. Eventually, I started teaching myself other codes, DHTML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. Then I moved into actual software and as mentioned in the video, I got my hands dirty with the code a lot. It was the process of taking what little I knew and applying it to something I wanted to build, then learning more. (Rinse & Repeat). Also, as mentioned, when I didn't have a project that I could apply what I just learned to, my motivation to learn would die off. However, when I did have a project, I not only learned a lot, I learned it fast and retained it.
As a 20 year dev a big piece of advice, if you get stuck for ages on one tutorial, find 5 others on the same subject, either blog posts, videos, sample apps - all of the above and keep approaching the subject from multiple angles. One of them will click.
Good advice. In adding to this I suggest sometimes to go back to topics you do not understand now. Maybe after 1y or even 5years after.
Been stuck with fixing some f**ed up quaternion math at work for nearly a month and only managed to fix it after digging into books for a couple days💀
Patience and confidence are main parts of success!
@@ruslan_yefimov Yeah, this is so true. The devs on my team lose so much time because they want the quick and easy solution, when it would be much quicker to do a deep dive into the issue and get a good understanding before attempting a solution. The worst is when someone on my team tried to trial and error a solution for 2 weeks, I take the task over from them, and find the solution after 30 minutes of reading the documentation with patience.
Agree. I was trying to implement minimax but I just couldn't understand the code. So, I read more about it and I could finally manage to understand how it works and hence, I implemented it myself without understanding their code.
ChatGPT is also quite useful nowadays. Helped me a lot with my Django learning.
As a person who is at 6 month mark, I can approve that learning programming is frustrating. No endaviour ever in my life made me doubt myself this much. Despite all the frustration I just embrace the chaos and keep pushing.
At this point I just don’t care, I do any entry task, take any test, just anything. Still nothing. Even if I don’t get any programming job in 1-2 years, I still won’t stop programming. Maybe this career is not for me. I thought maybe it was, but reality disagrees. Sometimes circumstances are just not right. But I’m done with beating myself up over this. I’ll just keep trying whatever I can, until I go insane. I can feel the need to do this
You studying by yourself or taking classes? I ended up doing both and honestly, I can say I learned a great deal in both paths 🤔 so if one’s not working out, definitely consider the other 😊
@@turolretar when programming gets into your blood, its impossible to stop :D
I've been learning for almost 4 years, and it has been a long journey and I don't think it will ever finish, I got my first programming job like at a year and a half after I started learning but unfortunately my boss was abusive so I decided to take the freelance route, I really love to have all the time I want to learn new and more advanced topics, and also to have the entire freedom to apply my knowledge in the projects I want
Update?
My biggest advice for anyone who is taking any sort of coding course (it doesn't matter if you are taking courses from Udemy or Coursera or BootCamp): build something on your own.
For example, if you are taking React course, after learning how to build a reusable button component, pause the course and start building a button component on your own, you will realize that you might not be able to make it even though you just learned it, if you can make one, try to make 10 of them differently, repetition is the key. While you are progressing through the course, pause again, and make everything that has been covered on your own again. Do this over and over you will remember and learn the patterns, therefore by the time you are making your own project, you could apply those patterns.
I think this is great advice. I'll add that I think what is a good approach to this is to think about what things you'd like to be different, whether that be organization of the code presented or application/UI behavior.
Ask "what can I remove from this example, or how can I simplify this?".
Ask "can I make this code more portable/re-usable?"
Mutating code and refactoring are essential exercises to understanding. And a lot of professional work is mutating and refactoring code anyway, so put reps into doing that!
That is the gruelingly difficult part for me - do the actualn unguied work, when your mind is blank and blanketless of the cosy validation of code-monkeying the tutorial cose and reapplying it to similar concepts, now irl.
Thank you for this. Do you use memory palaces?
This is something I started doing recently, I take something programming related and start experimenting with it unti I got it down. Right now as funny as it is, I hardly incorporate Boolean values in my code so I'm searching up different scenarios to use them and coming up with my own versions to practice with them.
Great advice, i'm studyng react and i realized i suck at doing things from 0
dude, I'm not new on this developer journey. I have been working as a developer for 7 years, and let me tell you something, I wish I have heard all of this since the beginning! Thanks for your comments, this is a hard to swallow pill of reality, but, we all need it.
I’m a professional developer now, bout 10 years, and if there’s one piece of advice I could give…skip those goofy book exercises and take the jump into writing an actual program that uses an actively used API or framework.
But in all honesty, being a good developer really is kind of a “journey”. I’ve been a system administrator, got my A+, and it wasn’t till after getting my computer science degree, a few years, EVERYTHING I learned started coming together ❤❤❤
It takes time! so long as you’re moving upwards with each new week/month…I wouldn’t worry 😂❤ 💻
Definitely mirror your experience! Also, these videos of also highlighted that TikTok is presenting a weird way of looking at the whole profession. In the 90s, when I started, it was all about just wanting to be good enough to work at Microsoft, as a system level developer. Nowadays, it’s all web. Don’t have to worry about memory management as much now.
It's a good advice, and a bad one.
Even after a few weeks (depending on the time invested) some people cannot write one line of code that makes any point in a big picture of a project.
Without basic things, people just write stuff without understanding or, even worse, copying code.
Depending on the project, you sometimes need 3-4 different subjects from different languages or frameworks.
So it is not as easy as you described.
I'm self-taught. Bought PHP for Dummies in 2002. Read for cover to cover and made the examples, took me 3 months. Then I created my own CMS and started a company in 2003. Very quickly I started to make serious money. But it's not all roses. Staying motivated - self-motivated - is extremely hard. Focus is also very hard. Create environment where you will not get distracted. Have kids? Better get an office out of the house.
One weird thing: I used to smoke. The I stopped smoking and my focus was gone. Turns out many years later some research was done on micro-pauzes. The smoking was giving my brain micro-pauzes all the time. Micro-pauzes let your brain catch up to what you are doing. It is extremely important in coding and staying in the flow. I still have nto found a good alternative to get those micro-pauzes back (but also still don't smoke so that's good I guess).
20 years later, it's a good career BUT with AI and AGI around the corner you might think twice about being a developer in certain areas. AI is already doing part of my work for me. It's going fast.
Maybe take deliberate short breaks to stretch your feet, walk, brainstorm, even chill or play a game for a planned time frame. If you're into less-unhealthy habits that are still unresearched and probably not healthy for you, vaping is probably better than smoking and provides that short break but I'd never recommend that to someone who managed to ditch smoking.
Interesting point btw, I'll find that research.
I'm not oblivious to how hard the self-taught path is....but as a blue-collar worker, I'm miserable and I've realized that this isn't the life for me.... and I lack the money for college, so I'm going the self-taught way... and as hard as it can be, I'd still rather struggle through learning to be a software developer rather then to stay at this dead-end job being unhappy. I started learning by self teaching just a month ago, but learning it and dedicating at least 3 hours a day to studying and working on my skills has really distracted me from the negative thoughts. So I'm honestly just trying to discipline myself to keep at it . I'm hoping I can make this a career even 2+ years down the line.
Why don’t you do a skilled trade like electrician
Hey man, I saw your comment yesterday, didn't replied to it... I took my first IT job after 2 years of preparation, Main reason was I made a lot of mistake when I was starting, Some advice I'll give you that, read almost all the major topics of the framework/programming language you are reading, Create your own software program cause it'll give you actual knowledge in the thing you are reading, and after that revise and Try to take as many interviews as possible, it'll give you idea where you are lacking and also gradually you'll get a job.... It's been 3 months, I don't know if you quit reading/preparing but if you did quit, start again, it won't matter much
I have been a software developer for more than 15 years and I still do "personal", open-source projects. It is _fun_ and it gives me a lot of professional satisfaction. (The job is to make a living). I have a CS degree, but I never stopped teaching myself, I advise everyone to do the same.
Do you think it's worth even getting a degree?
@prettyboishah2898 In Romania, where I live, one degree is paid for by the Government (by the tax-payers, in reality, of course), so YES is the answer in my country.
Man this video really came at a perfect time for me. Been teaching myself to code since November last year and started applying to job since late April. Yesterday I received yet another rejection after my third interview and I started questioning myself a lot. As you said it is a number game, I have probably sent close to 150-200 applications and yet only had 3 interviews. When you put things like this it feels like nothing but I am trying to look at it in a way that I am still getting some interviews, which means that it is doable and now it is just about getting better at selling myself and my skills during the interview. Not many people talk about how finding a job is probably the hardest part in becoming a dev and how long it actually takes so I appreciate you making this video to talk about it, brought my spirit back up !
Interview rejections are the worst I understand keep going you got this!
Sorry about the interview rejections, but reaching to the interview stage after 6 month of self study is no small feat either. I'm sure one of these days you'll clear an interview. You're much closer to getting a job than most of us are. Goodluck 👍
Do you have a CS degree? You can get one online now also and it's affordable.
A reputable coding bootcamp is the way to go. Save you time. So in a long run. You could easily make up that tuition cost.
@@smallstar88 As someone who did both a bootcamp and a CS degree. I would say that even though college is a scam because they make you take so many pointless classes including the CS classes, they give you structure and time to absorb the stuff. The bootcamp was literally a waste of time and I've never met someone who went to a bootcamp who was actually a good developer. If you believe you can learn everything you need to know in 3 months, starting from scratch, you're delusional. It's a bigger scam than college. They prey on people who are desperate and teach them all the same BS in 3 months or less and say good luck. If I could do it over I would be fully self taught or go to college as I planned for a couple of a years and after getting that foundation, drop out and become self taught. I am working as a dev now and coding in my free time for the last 6 months and have learned infinitely more on my own than anything college/bootcamp taught me.
Thanks, man. Really needed to hear this. Your first point really helped me. I quit my god awful job 6 months ago hoping that I'll land a developer job in 5-6 months of self learning, but honestly, I'm nowhere close and now it's taking a toll on my mental health. Sure, I've made a lot of progress and learned a ton of things, but I still don't feel confident enough. I'll go with your suggestion and adjust my expectations accordingly. Thanks once again.
In your case, you not feeling confident means you are competent. Don't give up. J.Cole said "follow your heart and you'll make that [money/peace of mind/wealth] fast."
How is it going at this point? Have you landed a job?
i'm in the same boat basically. I quit my job at the beginning of this month- i'm coming up on a year of self teaching, but really losing some steam. haven't applied to jobs yet because I don't feel ready still. I have a gig still as a contractor making wordpress sites for a computer repair shop near me, but that just demotivates me more. I hate using wordpress and i hate the drag and drop site builder. the job is essentially a design job, but extremely constrained since the company only uses one wordpress theme. I'm not a designer, and so far I don't think the shop is happy with my work (there are also issues with their management and whatnot- no adherence to the timeline I'm given in my contract, boss going in and doing large amounts of work or changing work I've done, etc) I would be happier making the sites using wordpress with react as a headless cms, but I don't have enough experience with react yet. I'm grateful to still be living with my family so my bills aren't going to destroy me, but I am running out of time on my goals. I wanted to get a job in germany this year, before the summer. I need to in order to make my relationship work (ldr german gf of 10 years not willing to do ld any longer)
half year? seriously? i'm learning evry day after work for two yerars now(python, javascript, css, html) and i think i need like one year more :)
Thanks for the heads-up i was thinking about quitting my current job to start self learning and hopefully get into development.
The software industry would be much better off if more people in it, were more like you. Great humanity and compassion. Well done!!
Absolutely. I completely agree with this comment.
Hmmmmm.... I know what you're saying, but it's not necessarily true. In the early days, when the software industry was just starting off and had very few people in it, the money was flowing! There's so many people in the software industry today - it's heeeeeeeuge!!! Today, it's very common for companies to simply find software developers in markets where wages are peanuts.
@@MnemonicCarrier I know business owners who did that and regretted it, there were time differences and huge communication difficulties. He ended up paying for something he couldnt use and had to start from scatch with local developers.
If you're a massive business and have the money to hire project managers who would manage these projects it's still challenging but you might pull it off, but again you will need to make that big initial investment in local people who will push the people overseas and make things happen.
The phrase "you get what you pay for" didn't come out of nowhere.
@@BillClinton228 I recall those days. Many moons ago, I worked for a bank that outsourced a project to an offshore company for an overnight batch-processing system. It took over a year and cost a small fortune, and in the end, it couldn't be used because it took longer than 24 hours to process a single business day's worth of transactions.However, things have come a long way since then - those days are long gone. Of course you can still find stories about offshore software projects that spectacularly belly-flop, just like you can find horror stories about ludicrously expensive local projects that fail.
My point was more about the "supply-and-demand" equation - something the software industry is not immune to. I started my career in software development in the late 1970s - back then I got paid obscene amounts of money for doing very little. Towards the end of my career, I had to work like a dog for much less money (inflation/CPI adjusted). Thankfully, I managed to strike it lucky with a couple of startups, so I exited the software industry and did my own thing 😄
Thank you so much for this video bro. I've just been on the grind for almost a year, built my first "acceptable" project and got into that pit of desperation, heavy impostor syndrome and lots of self-doubt, but after watching this video i felt that it wasn't all in vain and I got a surge of new motivation. If you're reading this, you can do it! let's go!
There's a bit of a personal identity sacrifice if you pursue it full time. When you get to the age of people associating you with your career (25+), it's awkward to explain. You could say you're learning to code, but you're unemployed. Something I never heard talk about
just say you're learning software engineering. sounds fancy enough to me ;)
as a 25 year old self learning full time I just tell people I'm a software developer lol they (usually) don't ask any questions after
Identity sacrifice? It's called shame of being unemployed at 25 and it's ok if you are really working to get a job😅
@@Chuckichanly I am older than that and have no shame in being unemployed while learning to code, and yes I do tell people I 'work in tech' as freelancer no further questions after that 😂😂its your life and do what you want with it
I used 3+ years with heldp from: My second son on it's way, that I took care while my wife went back to work after maternity. I started a "soloprenur" startup that failed big time, from that time.
You know what happened when I took the plan down after almost a year trying to sell my SAAS project? 0 money, but and interesting CV with real experience. After I closed operations I got an interview at 45yo 2 months later. Month later I had a junior web dev job. That was 4 months ago. I can't explain how many of the things I learned trying to start up my SAAS helped me survive and hold my job till today. I can say I am doing great at job and got a promotion 2 months into the job. It's weird breing a 45yo jr. But I don't care. I love this job, and it shows.
Back in 2017 I did this exact thing after graduating with a degree in software development... I quit my customer service job that I hated; took out a loan to get by for three months... And I ended up landing 0 programming/ developer jobs. 😂 Financially it was a horrible choice but mentally it was the break I needed. I ended up going into IT/ entry cybersecurity after everything. I'm back to being a self taught developer to become a cybersecurity engineer. Thanks for the advice. 👌🏻
Did you got college for Cyber-Security?
I’m an aspiring front end developer. I’ve been teaching myself for just over a year and I just want to thank you for this video.
I’ve definitely watched all the videos where people say they landed a junior role in 3 months, 6 months , 9 months and here I am at the 1 year mark. However I do look over my progress and am impressed with the projects I’m able to make on my own now compared to the beginning. I know I need to keep learning and building better projects
Yooo that's literally me rn I been doing it for a year and I feel like I'm going in circles but I can see my progress, would you be interested in doing some stuff together talking about web designs and layouts? I been looking for people to talk to about front end topics I've been solo throughout my journey
@@zorro8375 I'm also interested in this
@@ifeellikedirt do you have discord?
For frontend development you flat out need a solid portfolio of projects to demonstrate, schooling and even beginning resume tech work don't seem to cut it in this hyper competitive era with all the frontend frameworks popping out!
@@zorro8375 i am also about a year in, and just like you, got no one to talk about this topic with. Would be happy to
'Get your hands dirty' is a good advice. I started college with almost zero coding knowledge and our first language was c++. As soon as the basics of OOP course was over we had to build a project with c++. It was very confusing at first but building stuff (and suffering) really makes you learn. Learning the basics of the new language and then building something with it has been a very useful model. "wtf is happening" is a VERY effective way to learn coding and debugging lmao.
'"wtf is happening" is a VERY effective way to learn coding and debugging lmao.'
This line is life looool xD
@@TheSoulCrisis true, i at this point i am suprised if a code works right away. Even if i follow tutorials! lmao. Them typing mistakes sigh..
I took 30 minutes of free time to watch this, and I needed it. I am going down the self taught path right now. It has been very taxing with work and family, but I take a look back every time I get frustrated to where I started or where I was a week ago. Thanks for the "fuck your motivation" bit I got a good laugh and it's true.
Yeah I gotta remember dedication > motivation. xD
I think you spoke to everyone of my insecurities as a self taught developer in this video. Sincerely thank you for making this.
I keep watching this video, over and over. . .
You don’t know how valuable this message truly is, Don.
Thank you
Liked and Subscribed! I am a Frontend Developer going through job search phase and I could not agree more with all the things you mentioned, especially about removing emotions from this whole experience. I literally realised this 2 days ago and wrote it in my journal to remind me of this daily. Thanks for making this video. Back to my search...
It is in fact right that the "drinking for a firehose" bootcamp approach is not ideal.
We all know what the ideal path is... starting on your own, then studying coding in high school, then CS at a good college with a great teacher.
A bootcamp is not the ideal path, it s the best solution to a big problem: I want to start a career as a software dev but I do not have years to do it.
Also I believe that the "all of nothing" and "total immersion" that the bootcamp forces you to do is in fact beneficial is some respects... When people pushes themselves so hard something clicks inside them. Something of great value . (Hopefully something does not break inside them as well :P)
As a broke 27-year-old trying to change, you have no idea how much this helps. Immediate sub
Wow thanks man...even with a Bachelor in IT i am having trouble finding a job right now...makes me feel like it's worth nothing. But you just gotta keep on going and having faith in yourself. Best advice
After 2 years of constant studying I got my first job and current job as a developer in may 2022. Motivation isn't really there everyday as stated in the video. You just have to put in the work even if 1 hour a day. Just do it.
Man. I just found you today and this is the vid I needed. You’re awesome bro
I have been a software developer for over 10 years now. I think tutorials can be helpful, but like you say, nothing can replace just creating stuff, making mistakes along the way. I am not the sort of person who is able to just read a book or watch a TH-cam video and fully understand the concepts straight away, it takes iteration until you finally understand. Even as an experienced software developer who moves to another job, you will go back to feeling a bit like a beginner again, but stick at it, most employers won't expect you to hit the ground running on day 1 and will expect a bit of onboarding time. Don't be afraid to ask questions of senior developers, a lot of people are happy to help.
Even with being in a bootcamp, I feel like I have to supplement A LOT of information on my own, even though it’s somewhat a linear path. And i feel like I don’t know ‘more’ (?) than before but I constantly remind myself where I was 4 months ago.
Oh it is going to be a struggle. Buckle up!
How is it going for you now? Have you landed a job? Which bootcamp did you choose?
@@Words-of-encouragement.-. I've actually taken a hiatus and focusing on my job at the moment. I took Nucamp's backend course and it was a great introductory course I would say. Since it's completely virtual and only meet on Saturdays, you don't really cover as much material as other in-person bootcamp. It's way cheaper though, so if you want to get your feet wet, please do! And they have a great community
@@androschizo Thank you so much for answering! I did look into Nucamp (as well as many others), but I decided on going to the bootcamp at my university (University of Texas) so I am enrolled already, but I don't start until 3/27.
Best of luck to you my friend. I hope you get to wherever you want to go!
Man, this is definitely going into my list of go-to videos! I'm no doubt in the minority here, since I'm retired and have no plans to get hired for anything anymore. But I do a lot of data extractions and custom reporting for different companies as a solo freelancer, and I've been trying to learn C# for the longest time. Always something that gets in the way though, but I'm going to have another go at it and apply these suggestions. Subbed!
This is just phenomenal advice for ANY beginners in ANY field. You have just laid out the proper strategic outlook that is applicable basically in any endeavour that requires producing or engineering.
You've got yourself a new subscriber
This has to be the best coding advice I've ever heard. Thanks for posting. I started with the fundamentals and now I'm doing my own projects and it's such a big win when I write code that works and when I can troubleshoot an issue and solve it. I still do some tutorials, but then I'll follow up with a project of my own to really understand and remember it.
Your channel is very underrated! I'm definitely following your advice! Keep up the good work
"If you could build something for your old self in your old profession, what would it be?" - DonTheDeveloper.
I love that!
Thank you so much don! Your advice always help, honestly I was a bit discouraged but this will give me that extra push!! Can’t thank you enough!
this is a meta truth. applies to everything. motivation is unfaithful and will leave. what sticks is what matters and that is discipline aka doing things in spite of lack of motivation.
Hi Don, I've been all over the place with Software development. Originally started with Data Science because I saw the Google analytics and started by learning MySQL and eventually Python. After a month of Python, I feel in love with coding and jump into HTML and CSS for web development. After a month of learning these 2 things I jumped into the CS50 Harvard course which is free for 4 weeks. Found out I hated writing code in C and left the course. Played around for 1 month and a half with Java, Kotlin, Swift, Python again and finally returned to web development learning JavaScript. Got the fundamentals down with JavaScript. Recently picked up PHP to use alongside JavaScript. For the simple fact I see everyone learning the MERN stack. Figured why not go with older tech which most companies use? Now at the moment I just started learning React. So far since I started with Data Science my learning path in total has been 11 months. I figured out after all this time I love 2 things web development and mobile. Figured I will focus 100% on web development and later try mobile. Just wanted to share my crazy learning path and how I figured out what I want. Excellent video and very helpful.
Bro if you didn't like cs50 fundamentals with C, you don't like programming. Because in the course and specially with C you learn what is going under the hood, how memory works, what is the stack, the heap, what are variables, arrays, linked list, hash tables etc. And when you make a program in C, specially cs50 projects and labs you feel so empowered that when you go to python it feels like cheating
You're jumping around too much, stick to one thing: frontend or backend. Btw after week 4 in CS50 you no longer really use C, you missed out on Python, SQL and stuff about HTML, CSS and Javascript lol.
@@karl4813 That was 6 months ago and I stopped jumping around. I am only focused on one thing. But it is never too late. I am in the process of creating my first CRUD app and after I complete my project and feel comfortable with a couple of projects under my belt. I will complete the CS50 Course. To be honest? Deep down what scared me with using C was the garbage collection issue. I kept on thinking if I don't clean out the memory I will damage my computer. But I think it was because I didn't know any better. But thanks for letting me know about the remainder of the course.
@@DevlogBill Damage computer? You're supposed to use the browser version of VS Code so the C program doesn't run on your computer but on their server through the cloud, it's horribly slow at times but it saves you the headace of dealing with these issues with backend languages that can potentially damage your computer.
@@karl4813 I was using the online version but I also was using Eclipse on the side. Did you know you could run C programming on X-CODE? But X-CODE isn't all that great for running C. Kept on running into compilation errors.
I'm a self taught backend developer, with no actual experience for now. Some things that worked for me was to start with the fundamentals, then building my own projects. The projects will also help you focus more, spend more time doing research, but also showing to the recruiters that you can build something by your own.
I had built a few websites, but realistically I know its going to be hard to be noticed without a degree, some companies are just like that. I just hope I land a job and get experiences, because its hard to find a junior position job, if you have no prior experience and degree.
Where are u from
@@imk03 Canada
Already-in-the-market developer here. Love what I'm hearing so far, definitely take his advice.
Don't expect motivation to fall down from a tree, and don't rely on it to stick to your plans - as he says.
_Nothing_ worthwhile is going to be easy to do, you won't find any "free passes" like that. But stick with it, programming is really kind of "objectively" a good choice; getting into tech will make you understand more about how our current world actually works, and know that we're just falling deeper and deeper into digitalization.
I really appreciate how honest you were. Thank you. 💪🏿
4:27 on point bro, this learning path is a roller coaster not as school that if you remember some shit you get a star on the head(the path is linear and very limit). By using different technologies or been on different teams when working as a SW "whatever_role" or for personal projects we start at 0 again sometimes even when we "already know"
Thank you for giving it straight, no one really gives you a simple answer about this when you first start out, they all say "do a boot camp" "Become full stack" etc. Setting the expectation and example right at the start of the video was nice. Some days suck, some days are great, but everyday no matter what i say "I have to code".
I appreciate your transparency and honest genuine take. "you fucking do it. fuck your motivation." I love it.
I started doing the self-taught route, but decided on doing an Associates degree that combines programming with a business systems approach. I can learn a lot while doing my own projects as I go along. Degree is still in progress but having a taste of everything has helped me figure out I want to go the mobile application pathway.
While I’m ashamed to admit it, some a the coolest lessons I’ve learned in programming actually came from my university’s courses 😂😂
As much as I detest school lol 🏫
As someone who is almost done with my CS degree. I found this helpful and useful information. I also find myself having to relearn the basics.
Also, the life lesson really help clicked for me, he kept it real. You gotta commit to blocking out time. I run away from that because I always want to be motivated to do tasks, but that is not how the world works. Which is why I fail to be consistent with my health choices and career goals.
Thank you.
Keep at it bro. Last year or so for me was almost like getting water boarded 😂 but I’m GLAD I finished ❤
I have an interview in 30 mins, and I found this video very comforting and super helpful. The "introduce yourself part" and "talk about your role" as a Senior Software Engineer gave me confidence. Also, it feels so much better knowing that not all Sr. SWE are have 10+ years of experience and debunks the myth that interviews have to be so stiff. Please make more of this kind of videos! Thanks! just joined your discord group!
Was just wondering, did you manage to land that job? 😊
This is honestly good advice for self teaching anything, just replace coding with "x" activity.
I enjoyed the realness in this video. Thank you for putting it together. It's very refreshing and it's helped put some things in a different perspective for me as someone who's self-learning how to program. Is it weird that one of the things I'm enjoying the most is all the different keyboard shortcuts that are available to use? Learning and using them as I go motivates me. Just a random weird quirk I guess.
Building right away makes you learn so much more and solidify the stuff you already learned. My JavaScript teacher let us make up some of our own projects and I decided to make a short text based game. I ran into so many problems along the way and I learned so much from it. It helps you break away from just following tutorials (even if you have to look up solutions or you copy and paste someone else’s code you’re still learning).
This is a really motivating video Don. You are thrown so much info when starting as a self taught learner it’s hard to pick out the facts/good advice from all the rubbish 🙂 appreciate it
The information can definitely be overwhelming at times. It was for me anyways when I first started.
I am a self-taught UI UX Designer. what his saying is the real deal. it took me 2 years to learn how to design and find a job... his telling the real thing, its hard it will take time and you must do it when you dont feel like it. peace!!
I have just found your channel and can already tell how useful it will be. One thing I find useful is to copy paste something like a calculator, then open a tab next to it and hand type it in, googling what it means, then when I run it and it works, I delete it and do it again, relying on the copied version less and less until I find it boring and can advance.
Watched this video yesterday, I’m an aspiring developer and I have been watching videos, going from Udemy back to TH-cam watching crash courses. I always felt like all I am learning isn't landing in my head, but I give 2 - 3 hrs learning until yesterday. After watching this video I went to sleep with the thoughts of what @DonTheDeveloper has said, woke today and I launched my VS and started applying what I learned with only the thought of just start coding, anything or something whether good or bad, right or just start. It took me several hours with no idea where to start but I did start eventual and I must say the feeling in me, it is amazing, it is not much but to me the step reminded me how much I really loved to obtain this skill, how much I always wish to be a coder. Thank you for this video, I really appreciate it, stay blessed.
This is what I really needed to hear. The truth is when we are being self taught, we don't need motivation. To be honest we just need the determination to torture ourself. By that I mean, there are times when we absolutely don't want to code. Success lies in the dedication you have, when you feel a duty to code even if you want to do something else. Motivation is temporary, we need to find dedication!
So true........just like going to the gym and staying fit! It's tough.....I've struggled with both lol.
hands down, best 100% honest video by far. you hit all valid & necessary points in this video.
Love your videos man. Thanks
Best video on dev on TH-cam 👌🏾 great advice 👊🏽
Tutorial hell was me up until about a month ago. Thank you for this.
This reminds me of a friend I was able to mentor who was teaching himself to code and getting discouraged. His family was frustrated with his aspiration and being discouraging.
He asked me to look at his projects, I was impressed for the time he spent learing. I told him it would be an up-hill battle to land that first job, but he was definitely employable! I gave him some interview advice and told him to keep at it. Within a few months he landed that first job!
Don't take negative feedback from people who are clueless. Find a mentor if you can. Dont give up!
Been learning for about a year now, and it's been a mix of everything. One minute I feel on top of the world because my quiz app is working, next minute I don't think I'm going to ever get a job. But I'm not stopping. It's not a linear path, it's not up or down, it's everything.
I smiled the whole time listening to this. Great advice. I’ve learned early on I have to apply what I’ve learned almost immediately. Those time staring at a black page not knowing where to start will begin to disappear after a while
My issue with escaping tutorial hell is trying to figure out what I should make. Every time I have an idea, I decide it is either;
Too easy a task so it will not help me learn, nor look good on my resume, OR,
Too much effort to be worth making because someone has already done it before about as well as it could possibly be made...
It's easy to tell myself that anything is worth doing if it gets me experience, but then I get caught on whether I could be spending my time better as I (as a self taught aspiring dev) have no feedback to confirm whether I am on the right track.. This has been a long road and it is going to be a lot longer, I don't want to waste TOO much time doing projects that aren't as effective as something else I could be doing just as easily.
I can understand you pain man, i have been learning python for 2 years and till this date i don't know how to practically apply for loops and while loops, also I'm weak at functions
In general, part of the advice he gives - accept that you'll waste time, and go for it. Make things others have made, and try to mimic them if you must. Figure out the little things they had to fix when someone broke it by doing the unexpected. Realize that every project builds upon the prior, and this self experience is how you actually advance. Just do it, quickly.
This video is gold for me. I am currently going through this self-taught process as well. I do not believe that there are shortcuts like 3-6 months to a full-time junior dev job especially when the preparation of portfolio and (technical) interviews AND finally getting hired is gonna take a few months for some of us, much less to say the time required to pick up the different coding languages and skills. Yes, there will be a few talented individuals that can make that possible but not the path is not going to be as straightforward for most of us. I totally agree that staying disciplined is so important because there are really just days that you feel stuck, dumb, and unproductive but the whole idea is just to show up every day.
Thank you Don this's what I was need! Hugs from Brazil!
so glad the yt algo recommended your video to me. your videos are nice to listen to while coding
I am a self taught developer who has two years of experience now working in industry. I would say that my tips are to learn through building. I may have some knowledge gaps that can always be filled later when it comes to theory and comp sci fundamentals but I built my knowledge through starting and finishing bigger and bigger projects.
The comment "What would you have built for yourself back when you started?" unlocked a ton of memories and basically reestablished the ground work for me to get back into the thick of it.
Forget motivation and just do it. Whole heartedly agree! Thank you for the video :D
I'm struggling with learning for more than a year now and often doubting myself. Thank you so much for this video! You gave me hope ❤️
It's also about being in the right place at the right time also sometimes, you just need a break and someone willing to give you an intern position.
Who you know is still VERY much a part of our profession 😂😂 fr
Dear sir, I am grateful for your encouragement. Although I was hired as a backend developer last year, my tenure lasted only three months due to the company undergoing a restructure, which resulted in me losing my job. Nonetheless, that experience gave me a glimpse into the industry, and I am eager to pursue more opportunities. You earned a sub.
At least now you have it in your CV, that you had this job even for 3 months. And you have a viable excuse for loosing it (even if they fired you for finding you incompetent, you can still present it as "company was shrinking"). Do you see any difference now in how your job applications are treated, compared to your applications before you had that 1st job?
Totally agree that you should have money saved up.
I was only able to go hardcore bootcamp + learn to code mode because I moved back in with my parents, had money saved up, and worked my ass off before I ran out of money.
I disagree with “you got to take a little bit of a break”.
Time is the enemy. Front load the work. 99% of people have nothing better to do than work harder.
This is the best video I’ve ever watched on this subject. Thank you man. Sincerely.
thanks for the solid advice Chief! Sending you good energy, you got a strong Spirit!
pure facts. I sent around 60-70 applications before getting two interviews. One interview was literally a vocab quiz on OOP (no coding challenges) and the other was canceled without any reason . I think there is also the aspect of getting past the Invisible HR wall that merely just looks over your application when they don't see CS degree or bootcamp on your resume. I truly believe self-taught devs have to be above Junior level especially if over a certain age as Ageism is also very real in the tech world.
love it dawg! A frekin year went by lookin for the perfect roadmap and still didn't found shit..
@10:00 I've always struggled with consistency. I definitely have always relied on motivation rather than discipline. I struggle with keeping up with disciplining myself long term, I definitely plan on changing that soon since I would really like a better job!
When I first started to take a professional path down development, leveraging tutorials to build a personal project (for work) totally helped me reinforce the concepts I was learning and it allowed me to think/research how to tweak it to what I want. Its was awesome, the team loves the application.
Man learning any creative skill is litterally the same process
Watch introduction to the topic and get intrested
Research the best tools and choose a tool
Watch a tutorial on the tool you are going to be using and apply it
Now Watch few more until you feel a little confident then try changing small stuff to make it your own
Now try copying a simple project if you got stuck you search for how to do specific info
Now after a long time of doing this you will finnally be able to create and invent personal projects that might be uniqe
This is how i learned Digital art yea it took 2/3 years until i was able to make stuff 100% from imagination after not being able to draw at all before
Now i want to do the same for coding but i didn't be consistient cuz i jumped bettwen softwares/lanugages /frameworks
Im just gonna be focusing now on one language which is rust
I just came across your video and got to say I'm VERY impressed, it's one of the best video I've ever watched since I started out my Java learning path. I've enrolled in Java Bootcamp, paid 1 grand for it, and just finished it. The indifferent point of view I received was from the instructor. He told me that the "projects" is not necessary and it's not required to get a job (in my country, it's possible to get job without project, but it's tough). However, despite his criticisms, I move forward to take on my own projects, and tbh, it's extremely fun. I can apply all the things I've learned from the Bootcamp into the projects and it works!! I don't care people will use it or not, all I care is when the Hiring Managers ask me what can I do or bring to the table, at least I could direct them to my github account.
Half of the programming videos that i've seen in ytb it's about motivation for programmers. Thanks bro.
Thanks Don.
Applying all over the U.S is what I am planning on. No gf or wife or kids... Just a operations job now and finishing a CS degree. I know that even when I get my first job, it's still going to be really rough. People don't want to train/mentor new hires, especially in this field. You would think there would be some kind of of apprenticeship program in this field but it's feeling more like a circus 🎪. But one day, when I feel comfortable with whatever CRUD application I'm working with, I'll hopefully feel all this BS was worth it lol 🤣
Wow, not even halfway into the video and I already found enough value from this than even some paid courses... thank you so much
Thank you for the advices
This was way better then I expected at first and that neat English accent, wonderful !
Thanks for guidance
the same applies to people in bootcamps. I've felt all this shit during my 14 week boot camp
I've 25 years experience, now a lead data engineer. This is an excellent video!!! I felt like an imposter for 20 of those years. I realize that I was my own biggest roadblock all along, too. Occasional laziness delays me from learning something new. Still human, I suppose.
Man this podcast has an immense value, I still don't know how I keep coding thanks god I have a job that I don't hate but the thoughts of just giving up software engineering carrier wont stop, I definitely will quit this tutorials, thank you a ton you have no idea how much this episode means to me.
Thank you for this helpful tutorial. I have been feeling pretty discouraged about my journey. This was very encouraging!
Good video! I'm a self-taught Dev and I'm now in my 7th year as a Dev 3. I had coded off and on but not as my day job in IT for last 20 years until I jumped from mid level solutions egineer into a Dev 3 role and found was in over my head for a while but I can learn fast and that always save me. You never know everything you need when you start a role but as long as you can grow in to it. My lucky break came when a manager at my company who had taken a new role at a startup our parent company had seed funded and needed someone she could trust and learn on the fly. She was a really good judge of character! My boss left the company several ago and I've had 3 bosses since then and I'm still here and most don't even know I'm self-taught. :-) A word of caution about my story... I'm really good at backward engineering systems and frameworks and I've pretty much been fixing legacy apps for most of my 7 years. I rarely get to build anything new but get to work on a wide variety of languages and frameworks that will be good for my next job move to cybersecurity. 🙂
Great stuff. In my own journey, ive found that making programs I actually want to use myself is very powerful.
i'm a 16 year old data scientist intern from India, and it's so frustrating finding the edge to get the first internship. specially with the unemployment here, i took 2 days to build a goo resume tweaking and writing powerful verbs, following everying expert advice i got, however i recently got an internship opportunity in a company from saudi, and things are better. i wish the hype of data science gets lessen because it will improve the job market !,
anyway nice video don
lol the part about motivation is so true, i just do things even if im not in the mood to do them because the alternative is nothing would ever get done
18:57 "What even got you excited about coding?"
This really hit me.
I have seen the thumbnail of this video a few times before, but for some reason I didn't click it. Maybe I didn't want it to hit me so hard.
I'm glad I clicked it this time.
Thank you so much for this. Really helped me get back on track on myself. Im about to graduate as a CS major in may and i have not passed any internship interviews or even gotten calls back for sooo many jobs ive applied. A bit nervous to because most of the sruff they aks for i wasnt taught in school so i have been self teaching myself on the side. I almozt gave up but thank yku this video ready just slapped me in the face to tell myself its all in my head. 🙏
Thanks man, I needed to hear this. Been working hard but feeling discouraged some days. Great talk!
This is one of the most encouraging videos ive seen. Thank you
Man this is one of the realest videos on TH-cam…you awesome bro
Thanks for this. I have been learning for 2 years and always felt like I was going back to the fundamentals.
The way I see it, 2 years is going to pass no matter what. If we want it from our soul, we stay the course and don't give up. All the work put in, why throw it away?
I became a web developer because I had to. I was in the US Navy and made the IT of the location I was at. And they said I was also in charge of maintaining the web site. This was back in 1999 and I had not even been online yet. So I learned how to view the source code. I would find a site with a feature I liked. Then would look at the code to figure out what part of the code did what on the site and then implemented that into my web pages.
Eventually, I started teaching myself other codes, DHTML, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. Then I moved into actual software and as mentioned in the video, I got my hands dirty with the code a lot. It was the process of taking what little I knew and applying it to something I wanted to build, then learning more. (Rinse & Repeat).
Also, as mentioned, when I didn't have a project that I could apply what I just learned to, my motivation to learn would die off. However, when I did have a project, I not only learned a lot, I learned it fast and retained it.
26:30 - This fact about Cover Letters is SO valuable
On point. Thanks!