“Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
― Jake the Dog
So, like many other people I’m sure, the first thing I did after deciding I’d like to give web dev. a go is head to the good ol’ interwebs for advice about where to start. Oh boy did I find it. It seems like there are thousands of YouTube videos out there on how to learn coding and what to learn first and how best to learn it. Stacks of articles and blogs, heaps of podcasts, everyone chipping in with their own thoughts and “How to do it ‘The Right Way’”. I think like most people my excitement quickly turned to confusion and panic. Did I need to complete a bootcamp to get my first job? Do I have to learn everything in a specific order? What books do I need to read? How am I going to memorize all this stuff?!
This phase probably lasted a couple of weeks to my shame. I hopped from coding program to YouTube series and back again trying to get a sense of what I needed to do. Initially, I signed up for the course offered by Codecademy and made it a few chapters through until I found FreeCodeCamp.org and started working through the course there. Then I discovered Udemy and The Web Developer Bootcamp course offered by Colt Steele and dived into that. I spent probably 4 weeks just flitting between these and many more, never really learning more than basic HTML, trying to find what path was going to work for me. It’s hard when you have no direct industry knowledge to distinguish what a suitable progression is. Who do you believe when presented with wildly conflicting advice from people with “20 years industry experience”? The more I dug down the more I realised there was sooo much to learn and that if I didn’t commit to a set path I was going to wander aimlessly between courses forever. Thus was born “THE PLAN”.
Now, “THE PLAN” isn’t carved into stone tablets piled in the corner of my office commanding my every move, it just a few scribbles in the back of an old notebook. I think tip number 1 of my future ‘how to’ guide will be “have some sort of plan – write it down”. With all the conflicting advice, personal preferences and changing fashions it’s easy to get lost in ‘code-learning-limbo’, where everything is started and nothing is progressing. I will almost certainly change “THE PLAN” at some point but just some sense of direction has really cleared the way for progress. I am no longer in limbo and can sit down at my desk every day with at least some idea of what I’m going to learn that day. That’s not to say that I don’t still get distracted and run off on a tangent (I still do, all the time) but at least I can see the next one/two steps ahead.
My time spent wandering the code-course desert wasn’t totally useless however. I’ve learned a super important lesson which I intend to carry with me through the rest of this process which is:
NEVER LEARN FROM JUST ONE SOURCE
It sounds obvious, but just from going through the basic HTML lessons offered by different providers I found a HUGE difference in what was taught and how. Some courses completely omitted aspects that others hammered home with a sledgehammer. Some subjects were glossed over but covered in-depth elsewhere. Different courses might offer you one practice challenge or 3. The secret, I think, is to cover them all. Work through one subject from a course slowly, absorbing the fundamentals and then move on to the same subject covered by a different course. You’ll repeat a lot of stuff but that only serves to cement your knowledge further. Any “extras” you pick up along the way are worth the time. Keep completing the same lessons covered by different providers and you get a learning experience greater than the sum of its parts. Nothing will compare to real experience but having an openness to different examples will better your knowledge without question. Be on the lookout for new sources too, be it a podcast, a YouTube tutorial or even a conversation with another coder. Just try not to get stuck in limbo- when in doubt, follow “THE PLAN”.