I thought I would never make it
My journey into coding has not been an easy one.
Mainly because I didn’t know how to start, and didn’t meet the right people right away.
This article is for those people who, like me, were not lucky enough to choose Computer Science as their college major, and who are trying to study it on their own.
1 — Don’t think Computer Science is pure logic.
A major mistake I made when I started off studying on my own, is that I thought programming was so logical, that I had to be able to code right away. WRONG.
Mathematics is the quintessence of logic, and yet we study it.
CS is logical, but you need to learn its logic.
If you can’t code something right away, it’s just because you still haven’t learnt its logic well enough.
2 — You need a community.
Coding is great but also frustrating.
Having someone to turn to is life-saving, and this holds true during your entire coding career. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet great people at the beginning.
I remember in particular a guy who I turned to for help.
He was doing his master in CS so I assume he knew at least the basics, right?
I asked him what a Makefile was and he said he didn’t know.
At that time I had no clue Makefiles are actually basic things you usually learn in your first year of bachelor.
I don’t know why he did that, he surely made me waste a lot of time and an opportunity to learn.
3 — BUT. That time I also made a mistake.
I didn’t google it.
I didn’t give myself a chance.
I felt I was not smart enough to code.
I want you to know that, as long as you like coding, everyone can. And by ‘like coding’ I mean having the patience to learn how to code and how to debug.
4 — Learn, but NOT the HARD way.
The first course I picked was one on EdX that claimed to be for beginners — it was stated in the course title and it was offered by a famous university, so I deemed it to be a good choice.
WRONG.
It was meant for beginners in C, but not beginners in computer science generally — else said, it was meant for people who already knew a programming language but not C specifically.
I was having a hard time with assignments, and I thought I was just not good at it.
I kept struggling on the course, wasting time (and confidence).
Bottom line — if a something doesn’t work for you, something is the problem, not you. Change course.
5 — What actually worked?
Free options:
. Openclassroom — https://openclassrooms.com/en/courses
. Github repositories with 30days challenge —such as https://github.com/Asabeneh/30-Days-Of-JavaScript and many more
. Dataquest for data science (they have regular discounts) — https://www.dataquest.io/
. The Odin project (they have a discord too where you can find your support community, scroll till the bottom of the page) — https://www.theodinproject.com/paths/foundations/courses/foundations/lessons/join-the-odin-community
. 42 school , a completely free computer science school, with schools all over the world — https://www.42.fr/42-network/
Paying options for web development:
. The Hacking Project (in French) — https://www.thehackingproject.org/
