Introduction
Yesterday I accomplished my first milestone on my way to become a professional front-end developer by completing the first course out of 6 at FreeCodeCamp.
I already knew a bit about html and css but I learned quite a few new tricks that I'll be able to use moving forward. Next one that I want to complete is the "Javascript Algorithms And Data Structures Certification" which should take me around 300 hours to complete.
It's Never Too Late
It's never too late to learn to code. Check out the answer I found on quora when someone asked if it was too late to learn how to code: (I paraphrase but you can check out the full answer here
No, it’s never, ever too late. I’m writing this answer because so many other replies, especially from “career programmers”, just have no clue.
After spending 20 years in a sales, marketing and business strategy career, I started programming a few months before my 39th birthday (the reason is an entirely unrelated story). I’m now 42, so that was about 3 1/2 years ago.
I taught myself to program by reading code, code documentation, and code comments on GitHub. After I learned the basics I started reading books to deepen my knowledge. But what helped me learn quickly was this: I tried to find existing code projects that seemed really interesting, so that I could find something to aspire to. I then started looking for “code challenges” that I could do, with a goal of accomplishing one challenge a day (when feasible).
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As of today, I have published 1,200 open source code projects, most of which were created in one day, or within a couple of hours. This is me jonschlinkert (Jon Schlinkert):
My projects have been downloaded ~3 billion times in the past 18 months
My projects are downloaded nearly 300 million times a month (check for yourself: Stats for jonschlinkert)
Downloads have increased an average of 15–20% per month for the past 18–22 months (sometimes less, sometimes more)
65 of my projects are downloaded more than 1 million times a month each
My code is used by NASA, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and tens of thousands of other companies.
In the spirit of encouraging anyone who is hesitant to start programming because of age, I am contacted by recruiters daily, and have received offers from dozens of Fortune 500 companies this year (career-wise, it turns out that focusing on open-source is a great way to get yourself known).
Don’t listen to doubters, and don’t overcomplicate this decision. Just ask yourself if you think you’ll enjoy it (once you get past the basics). Join GitHub, browse for projects that seem interesting, and start writing some code!
My Coding Regime
Coding Everyday
I figured that if I ever want to get somewhere with coding that I had to code everyday. I'm currently trying to fit 2hrs a day, 7 days a week. It's been 3 weeks and I've already seen my learning curve increasing.
Mentorship
Once a week I sit down with my friend and he guides me through the steps to understand the Steem Blockchain development environment. I have yet to conceptualize how the pieces fit together but everytime we meet, something clicks and make more sense than the week before.
Stick-To-It-Tivess
Consistency is key, in the beginning, it's really easy to lose what you've learned. I feel that there is a tipping point where the basic foundation will be solid enough that I won't fear to lose all that's I've learned by slacking off for a week.
Why
Get ready for the world of tomorrow...
Learn to Code! Everything Else Can Come Later!
Photo by Goran Ivos on Unsplash