Thoughts on my blog post: “I never thought I would become a programmer one day”
I wrote a blog article last week: I never thought I would become a programmer one day -on that post I shared my mini coding journey over the years and some pointers for beginners.
I would like to add some more thoughts here at medium.
Programming is hard:
It takes a massive mindshift change to think like a computer scientist. I am taking a computer science course online which is helping to better understand how computers work. When you know how the machine works, it helps to realize different concepts of a given programming language.
Before I got the internet:
I did not had any access to books or person who knew how to code. Coding did not crossed my mind at all. I got interested in websites because I saw a website builder, and I was like “Yeah I can do that!”
After getting the internet:
Once again I did not look up programming or HTML/CSS. I looked into free website builders to make myself a website. One reason was, I did not had the money to pay for hosting. If I code and build a custom site, I had to host it somewhere, so I just skipped it.
WordPress days:
By the time I got into WordPress, I had the money to pay for domain and hosting. Why didn’t I look up into programming custom websites?
Maybe I was scared, or was too satisfied with WordPress CMS. Whatever the reason, I was busy with my blogging and then freelance work as a website designer.
Wasted time on switching languages/paths:
My learning path was not straightforward. I dangled around various languages and programming paths. Here is a short summary:
- My first language was JavaScript and JQuery framework
- Got into Java for Android app development
- Got into Python for software or game development
- Got into Unity, GameMaker game development
- HTML5 canvas game development, again JavaScript
- Realized that game dev is not my thing, so got back into web dev
- Learnt PHP for WordPress theme development
- Got into Ruby on Rails for web development
- Looked into React.js
- Took a few classed on PHP for back end development
- Learned about Node.js
- Spent some time choosing betwean PHP, Node, and React
- Now learning Node.js
Looking at my learning history, I can’t say if Node is going to be the last thing I settle on. But I will try my best not to change paths again.
Verdict:
My journey to coding was different. It took me close to 10 years to learn the basic stuff. It took like forever to decide on a path but I don’t regret it.
If you are interested in that post, here is an excerpt and link to the original post:
Growing up I was just a regular boy. I was never good at science or maths. So how did a regular guy like me turn into a programmer, coding things from scratch?
When I get the chance to talk to people who are new to code, it reminds me how it felt when I was just starting out.
Some time ago, I met this guy at a conference. It was not a developer conference, it was more like a marketing one. While talking with him, he learned about my web development work and how I became a self taught web developer.