A Programmer's journey: Things you might need to know
Tags: webdev, beginners, programming, codenewbie
Published: 2022-02-16 18:06:29

Venturing into the tech world is one of the best decision one can make in this today. Maybe you have already done that but you don't know what to do or where to go or even what tools to use. I was once stuck in there, only admiring the possibilities that have come with technology. I knew there were millions of website out there but I failed to know who built them and how did they did it.

My curiosity and love for tech harassed me daily until one beautiful day, I got an opportunity to be taught the basics of programming. It’s been 2 years and 2 months now learning how to code but the memory is still as fresh as autumn leaves. I was super excited to render just a “Hello World!" message into the browser. Guess what my first document print statement wasn't in Python or a JavaScript console message - it was an HTML <h1> tag render in Chrome browser.

 
Honestly speaking that gave me the motivation to continue learning. One might be asking, who really taught me to write my first line of code? Well it was a work colleague and he gave me the roadmap but told me I will have to make the greatest contribution to my learning adventures.

I was still confused on how to go about, a 25 year old trying to learn how to code. Questions like is there an age limit haunted me but I kept on learning. I later figured out I wasn't late at all I was on time and I had to continue going on. I had to first identify what I would love to do then take it step by step. Almost every self-taught developer would tell you that the first languages you should learn is HTML, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) for styling your pages and JavaScript for page interactivity.

I personally think that's the first step you can take if you are a beginner. This will help you appreciate programming while you gradually expand your skill base. Learn and grasp those languages and do so by persistently building projects. After that you can decide on the frameworks and other programming languages you would love to learn depending on what you would want to do. You are doing great if you taking that path make sure you continually code and build projects. Where can one get the knowledge you might ask?

The tech community is one of the biggest and most engaging community I have ever encountered in my life. Most people are willing to help you out there and make sure you become what you want to be. Without knowing what I was doing I joined challenges and visited recommended websites to learn even more. Here are some of the free communities that have helped me grow my skillsets these past 2 years.

1. **Coursera** – they offer a variety of free courses on any languages you would love to learn.

2. **Udemy** – one of the best communities that have a vast learning resources.

3. **YouTube tutorials** – there are many channels where you can learn anything in align with what you want.

4. **Sololearn** – a community full of free programming challenges and a platform to host your own projects

5. **Twitter** – there are many challenges one can take on this platform, popular one being the _#100DaysOfCode_ challenge. By far one of the best communities I have been into since I joined the platform.

6. **Discord** – like the above platform it’s a must have community.

7. **Reddit** – so much to learn from different developers around the world.

8. **Github** – a good platform to host your projects and collaborate with other developers.

9. **Stack Overflow** – if you encounter a problem while coding this is a great platform to ask question and find answers.

10. **Freecodecamp** – there are plenty of free courses offered by Freecodecamp on almost every technology out there from web 2 to web 3.

11. **Scrimba** – like any of the above websites there also offer free courses.

12. **Dev** – a very good space to learn about different things from different skilled programmers.

These are some of the best communities that have helped me on my journey. Remember tech is very broad and you are not obliged to know everything. Know what you want to do and then take it from there by learning the tools and programming languages needed. Engage with the communities, that is how I'm learning, and build projects no matter how small there might seem. Slowly one day it will pay off and we will thank ourselves for that. I wish you the best in your journey and let’s continue _CODING!!!!_