I took a coding class in high school and got a C.
I was a drama queen, so I was traumatized & I never took another coding class again.
Now I’m a professional software developer at a fast growing startup.
Here's how I became a pro dev without ever taking a coding class again.
How I became a professional software developer without coding classes
- Learned through projects
- Open university computer science lecture (MIT OpenCourseWare, Harvard’s CS50 lectures…).
- Interactive coding platforms (Codecademy, W3Schools…).
- Self-guided personal projects.
- Paired projects with other interests. Every project I worked on was a combination of multiple interests I had. I didn’t search google for lists of “beginner coding projects to work on”. I asked myself what do I like and what can I build around that.
- Learned multiple language. My first projects were iOS mobile apps. Then I moved into Ruby on Rails. Then I led myself astray with computer science lectures and started studying C. Until I eventually landed comfortably in Python for a while. In the end I ended up working in React. Learning how to learn languages quickly became an invaluable meta skill.
- Did write ups. After each of my projects I did a write up explaining how I built it, what I learned, and what aspects I most enjoyed. Doing reviews helped me realize how much more I enjoyed the frontend side of development. Which now landed me a position as a frontend developer.
- Played with no code tools. I spent some time playing with Webflow. I found it to be a really great way to improve my frontend styling skills.
There were 3 main methods I used to teach myself to code:
My motivation for learning to code has always been to manifest my ideas. I never cared about being the best programmer. I never cared about learning the ins & outs of computer science. I cared about learning exactly what I needed to bring each specific project from idea to reality. Coding platforms helped me learn the basics and each project taught me the rest.