Hey guys! On my last post I asked for your help because I needed to decide a way to go in my developer life, as I said, a lot of you gave me awesome advice, and with that I made a choice, to go with self-learning.
I don't know from where you are, but at least here in Mexico, (you're invited to visit and eat tacos with me) the tech community it's small, focused on just a couple of cities and if you don't have access, you can only try to go to college, books (a few) or internet. Now, analyzing the pros and cons, I decided self-learning. Make a plan, what kind of developer I wanna become, what's the job that I would like, find courses according to my learning method (I hate boring voices).
But I also need pressure so I don't stop doing it, so I started this, it's my own vlog, where some newbies can learn, get advice on what courses to take and so a lot of awesome people like you guys can help me become an awesome developer.
I also create a design for my vlog, I think it's important to show always my personality, I haven't named it yet, so if you have some names for this little one, tell me!
Thanks for all your support guys, my vlog is in Spanish but with cc in English, there's not a lot of content in Spanish so I wanna take that as an advantage.
Love you guys!
Hugs & Husky love 🐶
Top comments (35)
Remember, you're not on your own, you have the entire DEV community behind you! 🙌
Thanks for create a space where I feel welcome and supported, you should be proud!
Great initiative, although I didn't understand a word from the vlog, I can only give my 2 cents on the journey to become a dev.
1) Don't only learn the easy stuff.
What do I mean by that? While HTML, CSS, and Javascript can be intimidating for a new dev, it really isn't as complex as say C or C++, so if you really want to have a great understanding of programming, do one of those languages.
2) Train all you can.
Spend most of your time getting the basics down, all those fancy smancy techniques and framework might help you get a job, but a great understanding of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, will help you a lot more in the long run.
3) Have fun doing it.
If you don't do something you want once in a while you are going to burn out. Don't stop developing, but do some fun, easy projects once in a while to build confidence and have fun.
4) Don't strive for more than you can take.
Don't take on impossible tasks, that you think are impossible if you do kudos to you, but keep in mind that these tasks can be extremely rewarding for your dev, career experience-wise, but also just as damaging if you throw them in the trash.
Have fun & good luck
Hermansen
I know this is a hard travel, but believe me, I enjoy every second of stress, every line of code, and yes! I'm not doing it to learn only the basic, but to become a developer who can build solutions. Thanks for such an amazing advice Kasper, I really appreciate it.
Good luck on your journey =D. I'll keep an eye out for you!
I think that is a great idea and it is not out of the ordinary because many devs including myself are self-taught and I honestly think programming isn't something that anyone can teach you because it takes hands-on practice and you won't learn it from reading or watching tutorial videos alone. I hope for your success.
We never stop learning, the technology is 2 steps forward, so we must stay in the race to be awesome! Hugs, Jake!
I highly value education and self-education is probably its truest form. Learning brings purpose to life and makes for depth of meaning. What are your plans for your future as a developer? Do you have a roadmap? Where are you going to end up and how will you get there?
My plans have always been centered on education and community. I wanna become a front-end developer because I have a best friend who's back-end developer, and also my personality and what I like it's more focused on the front-end.
My master plan is to create my startup, I tried once when I was 21 and it was an incredible experience but without knowledge of wtf to do, so my startup died.
I wanna learn to code, start creating projects with companies, get a job for 2-3 years till I feel ready in all senses to start again.
I wanna create content in Spanish about programming, and educational company based only on mentoring, like a personal trainer but with code.
I like the idea of Silicon Valley, but I see myself here, in my lovely Mexico, traveling a lot to conferences and making my company global in different languages, I know english it's global, I'm part of this community because of something, but to give the opportunity to people who doesn't have the chance to study english or they just don't wanna learn in english, there must be options. This is a plan of at least 10 years, starting a week ago, I'm taking my chance and climb to the top.
That is a great cause to champion and a well thought out course of action.
This is a great initiative! as a self-learner and spanish speaker I think you made a great move, the vlog is a great way to keep yourself accountable and also help others who are just starting and don't have access to many resources, so double win right there!
There's a lot of ways to help others, we should always search for a way to help urself and the rest that can be in a similar position, I don't know if I'll be a good example, but I'll do my best :)
This is awesome! As someone who is self-taught themselves and now working as a programmer professionally I think you've made a great decision. Good luck!
Your support is everything, I'm so happy to have the help of such an amazing community :)
I think its great that you chose the self-learning path, especially here in México where there are only over priced programming courses. Its also great that you share your knowledge! What I can give you as an advice, (from what I learned from own expierience) is that when you are learning an online course and you feel like you already know the basics (of that language/framework) try starting a project on your own. Trying to build something by yourself, doing has really thaught me A LOT, because you start searching for answers on the web, instead of following a tutorial. It doesnt have to be a big project, it can be something simple, or even a clone of other website.
Best of luck y saludos desde Monterrey!
Without practice, knowledge is wasted, I'll try to start a project on my own as soon as I can :) thanks Fernando!
A ver cuando voy a Monterrey por carne asada :P
Cuando gustes!
I recently interviewed for a position that ended up being temporarily short term, and in the process met some of the dev team who all went through a code camp. When I was briefly studying CS in university, one of my TAs ended up at the same company I later did, and she did a code camp after we both got laid off. (I got the same opportunity, but there was really no point--I was already self-taught.) I've had clients and ex-co-workers also go through code camp.
During the conversation with the devs, they immediately blurted out, "You're self-taught!" when I explained my history. It's what worked for me, both economically and practically. There weren't code camps when I was growing up, but the Internet was abound with resources out there.
It's good that you're blogging in Spanish, though. When I worked with some clients who came here from NL, they said it's hard to find resources in (Mexican, Colombian, etc.) Spanish, and what's there is mostly European Spanish that's harder to understand than just reading English.
Hi Brenda, your video blog link is broke.
Thanks Luis! It's working now :)
Ok ...great ;)
@brendazam
something I can recommend is that you try to interact with other devs doing a pair programming or that you try to do code challenges every week. That will keep you constant and accelerate your learning process. Something I like too much about the United States is the strong movement that is generated in programming communities or bootcamps. If you do not have time to go to a bootcamp, you can try one of the sites that I think have the best developers training: frontendmasters.
On the other hand I could start to subscribe to other content here on dev.to or in médium ando reddit.
Little by little you will start to delve into more topics and something that allows you to make a constant search to know how much you impact what you learn in what you do every day.
Something that you have to take into account when you learn something, there is not one that does not serve you, on the contrary, over time you realize that what you learned helped you to understand more things more other paradigms in the areas of development
Hey Brenda! I don't have much to add to the comments, except that this is a never-ending journey! Even when you are a developer with experience, you're still learning new things :) Keep your motivation high and you'll get great results! If I can help with anything, just let me know. Funny thing is, I am going to Mexico in September!
I would love to give you a tour Marion! Thanks for your support!!!!