[PostMortem] of the Attempt and Results of Solving a [Real World Problem] in 3–4 Months.
By: Jon Robert Gementiza
Tags: Programming, Learning, Python, Progress, Business Development

Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash

INTRODUCTION

Greetings Traveller

Have a seat. Let me tell you a story. A story of one traversing a path that’s slowly becoming common as of late. A tale of being a “Self Taught” Developer.

If you’re one those whose at the very start of it all, afraid to take the leap, uncertain where to go, stick around. I won’t promise you’ll gain life changing lessons. But you might gain some breadcrumbs and insights to help you along your own journey.

Buckle up.

Some Backstory

Back in 2018, circumstances led to be homebound (which is a story for another time.) It was a non-negotiable kinda thing. Now rather than be bummed out about how the situation played out, I decided to be proactive about it.

Eventually I came to the conclusion; since I’m in a time-skip, might as well make the most of it and 3D2Y the sh*t out of this opportunity. If you don’t get the reference, it’s basically levelling up for an extended period of time.

Anyways, I decided to [Acquire a Skill] that is [Portable], [Scalable], and can [Generate Income] regardless where I’m located. Python fit the bill.

Roughly 1 year in; bounced around tutorials, articles, documentations, simple projects, attending some conventions, and even participating in a hackathon (this was a fun experience). Suffice to say, I’m not a complete beginner anymore.

And thats the problem.

You see I am now confident that I know enough of the Fundamentals of Python, to the point that I can teach it to someone else for a fee (true story). But it was not enough. Aside from following some good old tutorials, deliberate practice, reading documentation to really understand how a particular code fragment works, something was missing.

It felt like an invisible wall as blocking me. I needed to somehow break through, to go further beyond. But how? How do you see the unseen? Basically I’m between “you don’t know what you don’t know” and “you know that you don’t know something.”

Guidance

Fortunately, rather than blindly wander in the dark, I was lucky enough to have met some awesome mentors that I frequently converse with. They helped (a lot) in filling the gaps in my knowledge by pointing me in the rough direction of where I should be looking.

Through our numerous conversations and some research of my own, I came to a conclusion:

I needed to build something from scratch.

No tutorials or guides. From conceptualization, to blocking it out, and eventually implementing.

Now don’t get me wrong, tutorials and the like are great (I think building a couple of personal blogs and CRUDS are a right of passage for any developer). But at some point, their returns diminish.

The thing about following a tutorial is, what your doing is implementing a pre-made solution. Sure it teaches you the syntax, some way to do things, and maybe the thought process behind the code. But its an entirely different ball game to break down a problem yourself, and come up with your own solution.

And when that happens, what do you do? Where do you go once “Tutorials” and the like no longer add value as much as they used to?

It took some thinking, then it hit me.

[Solve a Real World Problem]

Fortunately, I know of someone who has a problem that needed solving; my wife and her business.