My self-learner Journey (so far)
Tags: beginners, javascript, html, css
Published: 2019-07-23 22:32:34


I started my coding journey around 10 months ago. My older brother is a developer in Brazil (where I am originally from) and he decided he would turn me and our younger brother into developers. After watching lots of Mr. Robot I was super excited! Bring the hacking on, I told him lol 
But all he did was share some Code Academy tutorials on HTML and the command line. No hacking at all! =/

But once I started creating my first very simple HTML pages from scratch and adding CSS to them I felt pretty awesome. HTML & CSS are my favorite duo ever! I also learned the basics of UI, responsive coding and a little more advanced CSS (I love CSS) and this all in the first 6 months, studying no more than 45 minutes to 2 hours a day, usually 6 days a week.

Then I found out that my beloved HTML and CSS are not really programming languages :( (Still love them tho <3) and my goal was (and still is) to be a badass developer sooo I started pressing my mentor, a.k.a older bro, to let me Learn Javascript. But he made me learn computer logic instead! If you are a programmer you probably think that older bro is wise because that was a good plan. But I didn't agree you see... I wanted to program!!! Nevertheless, I watched the classes he shared with me (maybe without paying all the attention they deserved) until the end.

Finally, he shared with me a JavaScript course!!! I was soo excited!!! I woke up earlier the next day (I am a morning person, studying at night doesn't work very well for me) to get the course started... And I didn't like it at all! Ohhh the deception. I felt like a failure. I couldn't focus on the lectures at all and didn't learn much to be honest. But younger bro was doing it. I couldn't give up!

Once we got at a certain point of the course, older bro asked us to stop and do a project. I was terrified of course, but in the end, with his great mentoring I did it: 
https://pachicodes.github.io/Products/


                   I was SOOO happy when it was done, even if I wasn't even that sure how I made somethings work, they were working!



After that, we started another course in JS with a different teacher and DUDE WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!!  I finished that course way faster and learned stuff. The teaching methodology of this new professor was much better for me and I was actually excited to learn! 
Now, I am making this sounds like it was forever ago, but it was actually last month (June 2019) lol. So yes, I a pretty much a newbie. BUT I can code some nice static pages and some basic cool apps in JavaScript.

          	
There are 3 main ways to learn to code: College, Bootcamp, and Self-learning.

·College just never was my thing;
·I love the idea of Bootcamp, but the time commitment and financial investment just don't work for me at this moment of my life.
·Self-learning was my choice. It isn't as well organized as a college or as fast as a Bootcamp, but with a mentor, a plan and dedication it works for me.
 

On my next post, I will write about things that make it easier to follow the Self-Learning route.




P.s. I would like to Thank Ali Spittel @aspittel for the inspiration. I saw her talk on Blogging yesterday at Codeland 2019 and now here I am, writing!