In this installment, we will be spending time doing a lot of brainstorming and searching. This means, we will be doing a lot of thinking and jotting down ideas. We will also be hanging out on our favorite search engine and listing down everything we can find. Assuming that you're also under a strict budget, we will avoid all the actual bootcamps.
But before we do, we will be thinking about and listing about our personal learning styles. Which styles work best for us? Do we want to code along as we watch the instructional videos? Do we want any code challenges after we watch the videos? Reading materials? These are some of the things we need to think about and search on our own before we start the actual searching.
I. Learning Styles
Try to recall some of our favorite activities we did when we were still back in school. Group projects? Individual projects? Follow along with the instructor? Reading and writing a report about what we read? Let's jot down everything we can remember back then on a piece of paper, and then we'll cross out our least favorites.
Here are some of the learning styles that I like to do in related to learning how to code:
- I like to do hands-on, and the easiest way for me to learn hands-on are code-alongs. Watching some YouTube tutorials or attending a Udemy course are good examples for code-alongs. Reading modules and blog posts that include code demos are also good for code-alongs as well.
- Practice coding and save them somewhere, such as replit, CodePen, or even as a GitHub Gist.
- Build sample projects and add them to your GitHub (in the future, your portfolio)
- Get together with your fellow coders and build some cool things together.
- Read blog posts from other coders who are already in the profession, as well as those who are currently learning like you. Communities such as DEV and Hashnode are good places to start.
- Write blog posts about anything related to your code learning. You can join communities like DEV, Hashnode, or Medium. Or you can also create your own blogs and host them on free services like WordPress, Tumblr, or Blogger. Or if you prefer being private, you can start a learning journal.
- ... and a whole lot more
Although I love a lot of learning styles, I still have to narrow them to the smallest. If I use too many styles at the same time, I can get distracted and lose my place on the units I'm currently learning.
From the list I posted above, I decided to use these styles in order:
- Code-along with the instructor/mentor.
- Save my code-along projects on my GitHub, CodePen, and replit.
- Sign up to a coding challenge platform, such as Codewars and Frontend Mentor, to build challenge projects. I will do one or two of these challenges when the right time comes. This will be helpful for extra practice and for good additions to my future portfolio.
- Push them on GitHub. I have also the option of copying and pasting my files and save them on CodePen and/or replit for extra copies. Still, pushing the files to GitHub is all I need.
- Write a blog post about what I recently learned and post the sample challenge projects.
- Move on to the next lesson.
Based on my current life schedule, it would take me about one to three weeks to learn one lesson. It will take a little longer than the one lesson per day bootcamp style, but at least taking time would help me more.
II. Researching career paths in the tech field
As we all know, the tech field is vast and wide. There are several paths to take. This is where we take the time to determine which particular tech field that interests us the most. This is a long process, especially if you're the jack/jill of all trades type of person.
When you choose your desired path, you will have a narrower searching. There are online programs and learning platforms that cater to a specific field. Also, consider searching for learning platforms that offer more than one field. The more successful developer or engineer should have diverse skillsets.
Do you like to build cool things for the world wide web? Web development may be the field for you. Want to make interactive sites and apps look good? UI/UX/web design may be your forte. Want to work with data and that you love math? Data analytics or data science may be your path. How about making things alive on its own, such as artificial intelligence? There's machine learning. And then making everything safe from malicious attacks? There's Cybersecurity.
No matter the field you choose, there's a school or online platform for that field. It also doesn't hurt to try out classes and concepts from other fields too, but we need to focus on your chosen paths.
In this case, I am aiming to become a web developer. I'm also interested in mobile app development, data analytics, and data science too. But my main chosen path is web development. What type of web development? Frontend development? Backend development? Full-stack development?
I aim to become a full-stack developer, but if I don't do well, front-end web developer would be my second choice. But for the time being, let's aim for becoming full-stack first.
III. What do I want in my own "bootcamp"?
We don't want to proceed to searching without using our own criteria. We need to brainstorm first on what our ideal "bootcamp" should be like. Again, we want to make sure that our criteria coincides with our current life schedule.
For example, in my case, this is my current schedule:
- I have free time after dinner on my working days as long as I still have some energy before bed.
- I'm off every Wednesdays and the weekends.
- My employer would call a "mandatory overtime" days, which meant that we're required to work an extra day. Because my employer is open 24/7, my required day to work is Wednesdays. Luckily, this doesn't happen often.
- Some days, I have appointments (doctor, dental, etc.) on Wednesdays when needed. I also have some activities with my mom on Wednesdays as well.
- Weekends are chore days.
- I babysit my toddler nephew on Wednesday mornings and Sunday daytime.
- I also take self-paced online art courses.
The criteria I came up with based on the factors above:
- Self-paced learning without any limitations.
- Hands-on interactivity is very important.
- Reading material is a lot faster than video watching, so I want to have both of them together.
- Daily open and friendly chat community filled with mentors/teaching assistants available.
- Career coaching and job placement programs.
- Courses already completed still available for access/reference. They may get updated too in the future, and I would like to be able to update my skills as well.
- Any supplemental platforms for more practice.
- A program fit for my current budget. They can range from free to low cost/installment payment.
The searching may take awhile based on the criteria we list out, but it would be a lot easier to narrow things down.
In my case, as a long-time self-learner, I have come across a lot of learning platforms that I registered before or bookmarked for future reference. I will be looking back on those learning platforms before I begin my new searches for any new platforms.
Next part...
As an example for this series, I will be posting my platforms that would form my personal bootcamp. I will also explain why I have chosen them and match them to the criteria I came up with beforehand.
Until next time! Happy searching!
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