what made me a developer?
Tags: devjournal, beginners, programming, career
Published: 2022-08-18 16:31:12

> Disclaimer: I'm directly writing it in the editor, so wear your seatbelts before starting, 'cuz I don't know where we'll land.

TLDR; Here are some things that you can learn from my journey, 'cuz I know I'm bad at talking:
- Learn in public, start out on Twitter or any other community.
- Don't start with YouTube, start with something more structured.
- Don't hesitate to ask and reach out to people when in a problem.
- Follow me on Twitter (couldn't resist that)

I've imagined myself so many times (I'm not weird you also have done so 😒) getting interviewed, so this should be a smooth ride.

My first introduction to computer was at my uncle's house, played games, and then at my cousin's house, played more games and then at our own house when my mom and dad suddenly got me one, GTA is rad.

The above was me shitting or probably boasting my game and GTA skills (you better not get ahead yourself), the real journey to computers start when I got bored with games and obviously didn't want to study, so I started playing with the good old Windows XP "professional", crashed it couple of times set a cursive font as the system font (probably the worst decision of my life 😥).

I first coded HTML on a much older PC than myself, I know I said "coded", this doesn't make any sense, right? It sure does to a boy who only played GTA with some cheat codes 🥴.

BTW, GTA cheat codes is the best piece of code... period.

Then after that short first date with programming it obviously didn't work out, fast-forward 2-3 years and here I am sitting in quarantine ready to learn code.

I started with YouTube and stayed at YouTube for like one and a half year, learned some cool python and hated JavaScript at first, but there isn't any choice but to love it at the end, obviously those skills looked like shit because of imposter syndrome.

So the first actual learning you can take away with you after reading the above sh*T, is that Never Ever start programming with YouTube**.

The reason I say this not because the YouTube people aren't good or the content they make is, they are great, and it's not just I'm saying it they actually are that's what makes it harder for a beginner. When you see someone so good at programming when you aren't even able to do hello world, it feels like shit. We just forget that they actually prepare a lot of that beforehand and have many takes making that project or anything.

Also, you can fall into Tutorial Hell, it's terrible and do really exist. I thought I knew what it was and that I'm not falling for it, but I did anyway because that's actually so tempting.

It's better to start out with something more structured and reliable solution than YouTube like freeCodeCamp or any other website that you find helpful. Also, it's really helpful if you start learning in public, the community that may look overwhelming at first is really, really helpful and supportive, you can't believe how many people are ready to help you out or stop you if you're doing something wrong.

And that doesn't mean you should never or can't learn anything from it, you can but be patient, I watch a lot of tech YouTube, but now it's okay because I know what I'm doing.

After I got out of that imposter syndrome and forced myself to recreate the projects without looking at them, going through docs and tech forum, I was finally able to get out of it for good.

Shortly after that, I created a whole CMS for a local business in Django and then remodeled it again with NextJS x tRPC and Prisma. And now I'm doing another project with them where I'll create them a static landing page and a blogging platform.

So the second thing you should keep in mind, after you get your basics done don't think that I'm not ready yet aka imposter syndrome, you're always ready be confident in yourself and just try out.

I said it I didn't know where we'll land, here I am ranting about my tech journey. So glad that you read it this far.

I'm always open to connect and collaborate, just reach out. 😜