Programming Job Acquired: Mission Accomplished

So it is finally here:

This week, I am officially unemployed. Next week, I will be working as a front-end developer, finally! pic.twitter.com/FEyjmB55ae

— Coding Lawyer (@coding_lawyer) August 10, 2016

Monday was the last day in my legal job. Starting next Monday, I will be working as a front-end developer at medium-sized company. So, I think that this is the perfect time for me to reflect on my coding journey whose first scenario, which lasts from the beginning until this week, is coming to an end. However, at the same time, the second one is ready to begin.

In this post, I will share with you my 'coding journey in a nutshell' and interesting insights that I gained along the way.

My coding journey began on

26th November 2015

On this particular day, I bought my first programming online course on Udemy. Back then, my programming knowledge was equal to zero (triple equal to be precise). I was at the beginning of my journey. I had no idea that this decision will have such a huge impact on my future career.

Long story short, I got my first programming job on June this year. So, it took me seven months to learn how to code from scratch. However, I needed to wait two more months until the statutory notice period expires.

Coding Journey Part 1: Overview

At the beginning of my coding journey, I had no idea that I will be a professional programmer one day. I did not even know I was a type of a guy that can do that kind of job in the first place. My major concern was that I had no formal computer science education whatsoever. I was not even a fan of exact sciences at high school.

From my own experience, a lack of formal computer science education is the main reason why so many people are discouraged from trying to pursue a programming career. There is deeply rooted belief, that you need some kind of computer science education to be able to get a job as a programmer.

Of course, I thought this might be a hurdle for me too. However, the more I coded, learnt about coding and about other people’s experience, my state of mind began to change. I started to play with an idea that programming can be something more than just a hobby for me. I really enjoyed the creative process whose outcome is a fully functioning application made from scratch, which even do something useful.

I was literally consumed by it

At that time, I have been reading so many posts from people who switched to the programming career in a year. Well, that is a lot of time, you might say. But if you think about it, it is actually a pretty short period of time. If you are able to learn new skill from scratch and find a job in a year, well that is just awesome. Keep it mind, that people study many years to get a promising job.

I myself was able to get a job in seven months. The length of the period before you are able to get a job can be affected by many factors. You must choose your resources wisely. I already wrote two posts about JavaScript materials in general and React materials in particular. You must think about the way you learn all the time, since it is the main thing that makes a huge difference to your progress.


Turning-point No. 1: Feedback

There are so many other factors that affect your overall progress (motivation, regularity, spare time etc.). Some of them are more important than others. It is really useful to code regularly every day, as I wrote earlier. In my opinion, the most important is the one that is not fully under your control. It is feedback (check out my older post on this topic).

If you are not able to get any feedback, your progress will be much slower

When you are learning to code, it is not that difficult to get at least some. If you do not know any programmer personally, you still have whole internet overflowing with communities of people willing give you feedback for free. You can always find somebody who will tell you what is wrong or right with your code.

Of course, you can learn A LOT from your self-studies without anyone’s help. Nevertheless, you will eventually get to the point at which it will become more and more challenging for you to move forward effectively without any feedback. Your progress will be much smoother if you have a mentor who will tell you what is wrong with your code or how you should structure it better. There are so many issues that must be considered when writing proper code:

• Is this really the best way how to write a particular code feature?
• Should you use promise or callback in a given case?
• Is jQuery a perfect library for this project?
• What about React and Angular libraries, will not they be a better choice for this app?
• What coding design pattern should you use?

Without any mentorship whatsoever, you will be forced to not only answer these questions yourself, but to figure out that you need to ask them in the first place. Of course you can do this on your own, but you will need to read a lot of other people’s code and articles to be able to do that. Moreover, it will certainly take a significant amount of your precious time.

I myself was able to get some feedback on my coding projects I built from my friends as well as from an online community.


Turning-point No. 2: Real-life Projects

However, getting some feedback will not be the only crucial point you will experience on your coding journey. At least, this was my case. As I was gaining experience, I started to feel that by working only on my own small applications, I was not able to tackle more complex coding issues and concepts. For example, you can take a look at my JavaScript calculator (guide). I am proud of it. However, it is a relatively small application. I started to feel that I need to work on some larger real-life projects to be able to make significant progress.

In my opinion, this is the right time to start looking for a job

However, when I started applying for the front-end developer positions, I was not in this phase yet. I wanted to wait at least a month to learn more about various JavaScript libraries and frameworks. I still needed a little more time.

The reason why I actually applied for a job at that time was pure coincidence. On May this year, I visited startup job fair in Prague (Czech Republic). After talking to the people from different companies, I was invited to several interviews. I told myself, that I had nothing to lose. If I will not get any job, I will at least have a better knowledge about employers' job requirements.

However, it worked out well and I got a job as a front-end developer

Coding Journey Part 2: New Beginning

Today, two months later, a couple of days before the first day in my new job, I can say that I find myself in the exact position I mentioned above, which is the right one to start looking for a job.

I am now even more confident that my decision was the right one and I am really looking forward to my new job

Do you want to make effective progress? Code Every Day!

Recently, I read an article from the author of famous jQuery (JavaScript library) John Resig. He talked about a topic which I am also familiar with (and I guess you as well). He discussed the fact that he does not have enough time for doing his coding side projects effectively. This led to insufficient progress when building them.

Making any side project can be very challenging, especially when you code eight hours a day at work. However, Resig's article can be also applicable to anyone who has a full-time job, not only to professional programmers. I am such an individual, since I am not coding for living yet. I know very well how it can be sometimes difficult to code after you come home from work. This means that your are basically able to code only in the evenings (or at night) or on the weekends. Since I often relax on the weekends, I code mostly after work.

This lack of spare time sometimes leads to non-consistent coding periods. In other words, I am not able to code for a couple of days in a row. Even two day gap might cause that I forget what I was working on. The worst case scenario is when my coding gap is longer than five days.

So, I am experiencing the same problem as John Resig in his article:

I am not able to code every single day.

As a solution, Resig set himself a couple of rules to become more effective and to make more significant progress when working on his side projects. In a nutshell, these rules were:

• code every day
• write only useful code
• all code must be written before midnight
• it must be open source up on Github

I guess these rules are OK for an advanced programmer, but not for me or for anyone who is not coding for living. Only skilled programmer can produce 'useful' code everyday.

So, I decided to set myself less strict rules. In reality, I created only one rule, which (I hope) will help me to become more effective programmer and to make better progress. This simple rule is:

CODE EVERY DAY – MAKE IT YOUR HABIT

However, this does not mean that you need to make your Github chart all green. I also have many of my projects on my hard drive only. As John Resig correctly pointed out: ‘this is about a change that you’re making in your life for yourself not a change that you’re making to satisfy someone else’s perception of your work. The same goes for any form of dieting or exercise: if you don’t care about improving yourself then you’ll never actually succeed.’

I also agree with his other claim that ‘the feeling of making progress is just as important as making actual progress.’ It is truly important for you to always feel that you are moving forward.

Before I go to sleep, I sometimes feel that I have not achieved coding progress that I wanted to that particular day. As a result, I code even after midnight and do not sleep enough. John Resig claims that with a habit of coding every day, this anxiety will melt away.

I guess that might be true. If I will be making progress each day, I will not feel anxiety to make bigger progress on a day, before which I was not able to code for a couple of days. Instead of feeling that I need to make progress every now and then, I will make it regularly each day.

Maybe you are now wondering, 'for how long do I need to code each day?' This of course depends on your personal preferences. I guess half an hour can be sufficient for experienced coders. However, I myself need to code at least one hour a day. Otherwise, I do not feel that my progress is sufficient. This is in part due to the fact that I often encounter an issue which takes more than a hour to solve. I guess this sometimes happens to anyone :)

Starting today, I commit myself to code every single day.

I will share my experience in some of the future posts.

What about you? Do you code every day? Or do you want to start and join me in my commitment?

If you have any experience with this approach, please let me know in the discussion.

Feedback - The Most Important Thing, Man

If I should mention one thing, about which I often think about these days, it is feedback. The more I code, the more I am convinced that receiving feedback from an experienced individual is a necessary part of this learning process. I’ve never thought about this much before, and that was a mistake.

When you are learning to code, feedback is crucial for you since you want to write a good code and only an experienced programmer can tell you, if you’re on a right track or if your code looks like spaghetti.

When I look back at my legal university studies, I realize that I had a lack of feedback at that time. If you don’t have enough of it, you might get cocky and think that you have a complete knowledge of a particular field since there is no one who would tell you that you see only a tip of the iceberg.

If I think about that today, I end up realizing that the most important thing I was missing at that time was a constructive feedback. If you want to be really good at something, you need a help from the experienced 'one' who is willing to tell you not only that the result of your work is great but what is wrong with your work as well.

In the perfect world, feedback should be a part of every learning process.

The more I code I am writing, the more I am realizing that feedback is the single most invaluable thing that is helping me to move forward. This is true especially in the programming field, where you don’t know what you don’t know.

You can write dozens of apps in your favorite programming language, but does it mean you’re an expert in that particular language? I doubt so. You can write your versions of Facebook in jQuery and you might feel that you’re the jQuery ninja. However, no professional would really write such a complex app in jQuery. There is Angular, Backbone or React for this kind of app and also a lot of other JS frameworks and libraries for other stuff.

I know that this short post might seem too trivial for many of you. But for me, undergoing this process of thinking about the importance of feedback helped me to move forward and to look at my progress from a new perspective. Thanks to this awareness, I was able to critically evaluate the past and future of my coding journey and learn new lessons from my wrong decisions.

My First Post: Why I Started to Code

In this post, I would like to briefly introduce myself and tell you why I decided to become a programmer.

My name is David and I love to learn new things and meet new people. A couple of years ago, I graduated from law school and start working as a lawyer. At the law school I did a lot of extracurricular activities since I was very interested in the law. I always thought (surprisingly) that I am going to be a successful lawyer one day. However, after a few years of working in the legal field, I have begun to have doubts about the direction of my career.

I felt that the legal job was not satisfying to me anymore.

So I decided to look into other fields which I found interesting. I checked some online course on sites such as Coursera, edX and Udemy. Because I love cooking, I enrolled in the Science & Cooking first. This course was great and I definitely recommend it for anyone who wants to learn science that lies behind the creation of delicious meals. However, this course was just a hobby for me.

When I was searching for other online courses, I came across many programming-related courses. First, I was like ”How can I possibly code? I said goodbye to sciences after finishing high school and I was happy for that.” Nevertheless, I bought one of the courses – The Web Developer Bootcamp - which was kind of a new at that time and was aimed (as the title suggests) on front-end as well as on back-end web development. 

This was the moment, when my journey to become a web developer began.

As I went through this course and experienced coding in HTML, CSS and in JavaScript, it was a brand new feeling for me. “Wow, I can now create something from nothing which can be even useful. Plus I don’t have to memorize tons of information to be able to do that.” It was primarily this creative process which is involved in programming that excited me the most. The added value of this particular course was also a Gitter room where I could chat with other students and get more coding tips.

When I finished the JavaScript part of the course, I was thinking that I am learning some really cool new stuff but I was thirsty for more practical exercises. And then I have discovered the Free Code Camp, the site which purpose is to teach you how to code by doing tons of exercises.

It seemed to me that The Web Developer Bootcamp and Free Code Camp were two puzzle pieces fitting together – theoretical background + tons of exercises.

These two courses became basis for my journey to become a web developer.

 

Web Developer Bootcamp

 

Free Code Camp

At the time of this writing, it has been already a couple of months since I have written my first HTML tag. As every self-taught programmer (at least I hope it is not just me!), I know how challenging learning to code can be. This is also one of the two reasons why I started this blog. Although, I am not an absolute beginner, I hope I can convey to all of you, through my future blog posts, an original perspective on how to successfully learn to code.

Via this blog I also want to share challenges I am going through every day from the beginning of my coding journey as well as projects I am working on and other programming-related topics.

To sum up, two reasons that lie behind the creation of this blog are:

sharing my experience, projects and ideas 
document my coding journey