HNGi8: My Coding Goals and the Beginner's Journey
Tags: beginners, frontend, javascript, codenewbie
Published: 2021-08-16 15:11:59

> I want to be a self taught developer by the end of 2021. I want to be job ready...

While others were writing down their goals at the beginning of the year, those were the exact words I remember putting down as my goal for the year. 

The passion supersedes any cost of time and energy and resources it'd involve, I just want to code, not for fun but to a professional level this time. 

It's either I go big or I go home, that's the mindset with which I started the year.

Well, this is August now, so I'm still on the process. But it won't be out of place if anyone ask how far I've gone with my decision. 

Anyways, I'm just a trekking distance away from 'Hello, World!', so you'll catch me struggling in the stringent hands of JavaScript now.

I still can't call myself a developer yet, despite the voluminous resources I've consumed online and torrents of self-paced tutorials I've been through all the while. Honestly, the journey is far from easy. And you know if it's meant to be easy, everybody would've done it, so don't blame me yet!

Learning to code is not just devastating but quite overwhelming. Each passing moment comes with torrents of tools and new trends that keeps spewing into the ecosystem. Even the numerous learning platforms and paths with diverse curriculum can make a total beginner like me waddle more into confusion. 

One minutes it's fun, yeepeee! You just passed the first challenge and you think it's that easy. 

Moving forward to the next one, you read through the task, you couldn't even understand anything not to talk of thinking out a clear solution. 

You run to google for help, scribble the challenge into the search engine. And boom! a thousand and one solutions, sprinkled with strange syntax jumped right into your face. 

You don't even know where to start. Next you get stucked and feel like throwing things on the wall. It's as if you've been wasting your time on Youtube videos all the while.

That's how overwhelming it can be. Most times, I stopped and get my mind off it or better still get into something else. But i never back down. And it's best to let anyone know that struggling is part of a beginners journey in coding.

I still don't know the most difficult thing to learn in life but I believe If you can successfully teach  yourself a programming skill, then you can teach yourself anything else.

Earlier in my journey I decided against bootcamps, I just wanted to do it on my own. I believe being a self-taught would be the best and fastest way to fit into the system. But i was wrong, at least it didn't totally work for me, especially as I started with almost a zero knowledge of programming basics from college. 

With a couple of Youtube video like this one [here](https:youtu.be/UB1O30fR-EE), learning HTML and CSS in [freeCodeCamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org) wasn't too challenging. It's fun displaying those contents on a webpage for the first time, playing round the camper cat image and breezing through the challenges. 

Getting to JavaScript algorithm and data structures I was so stucked that I wished I never started in the first place. But Baeu Collins video [here](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DPkZNo7MFNFg&ved=2ahUKEwjW04iW1bXyAhUaQ0EAHb-yD4kQwqsBegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw27iKp0RXcwGapbnK5SE9L6) prepared in line with the curriculum was a big help in scalling through the basics challenges in FCC. But I still have that not-good-enough feeling even after the projects and the certification.

Last week I decided to sort for bootcamps and coding meetups to spice up the journey. I needed that professional exposure. I think that's where bootcamps play huge roles by helping one meet other coding enthusiasts and collaborate on bigger and real life challenges.

**So I found [HNG Internship](https://zuri.team)**

It's a free online beginner bootcamp for complete tech novices handled by veteran tech experts with track records in the tech industry. It's aimed at providing mentorship and collaborative environment to the participants to help them overcome the hurdles and challenges at the entry level into the industry.

While gearing up for the internship this eight month of the year, I'm making this post to serve as my accountability partner in keeping track of my coding goals for this next 8 weeks of the bootcamp in line with my 2021 goal. 

**These are what I want to achieve at the end of the internship as I choose the frontend stack:**

1. Learning frontend tools to a professional level.

2. Working on real life challenges to improve on the skill.

3. Building more projects I can add to my portfolio.

4. Networking with other coding enthusiasts.

5. And being job ready.

I hope to get the best out of this opportunity as I reminiscence in the words of  Amelia Earhart when she said,

> *The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.*

Thanks for reading. You can learn more about [HNGi8 Internship](https://zuri.team)

**You can follow the tutorial links below to catch up on some technologies used in the internship.**

[Git](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-beginners-guide-to-git-github/), [Figma](https://trydesignlab.com/figma-101-course/introduction-to-figma/), [HTML](https:youtu.be/UB1O30fR-EE)
[JavaScript](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DPkZNo7MFNFg&ved=2ahUKEwjW04iW1bXyAhUaQ0EAHb-yD4kQwqsBegQIBhAB&usg=AOvVaw27iKp0RXcwGapbnK5SE9L6), [Python](https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/the-python-guide-for-beginners/)