How I’d Learn to Code RIGHT NOW (If I Started from Scratch)

it's always funny to me because lookingback on how i learned to code back in2014 is similar to how people now lookat videos of people in black and whitedriving around and model t forwards ithought back then that i was on thecutting edge to be honest that i waslearning so quickly but now that i'vebeen a professional software developerfor so many years now that i've mentoredpeople who are learning to code who aretrying to become software developersthere's so much that i've learned that irealized that i was not on the cuttingedge like i thought so in this videowhat i want to do is really show youexactly how i would learn to code if ihad to start all over start from scratchright now to give myself the bestopportunity to land a job i'm talkingabout not only learning materials i'mtalking about projects you can buildwhen to start applying like i'm gonnalay it all out there as simply as ipossibly can so let's dive in if we wereto hop in a time machine back into 2014and really see how i did this so if wehop into delorean hit 88 miles an hour[Music]you would see that the process waspretty straightforward first thing is ihave my friend who recommended that ibecome a software developer he thoughtit'd be a good fit i asked him how youdo that he said check out this headfirstjavascript book first and see if youeven like it i read that from cover tocover so i learned javascript that wayand then i built two projects a tetrisapp and also a google maps api app afterthat i actually learned c sharp as wellthrough the head first c sharp book ofcourse i built two c sharp projects atthat point i was about nine maybe tenmonths in i applied for a bunch of jobsi eventually got a single interview andoff that single interview i landed a jobso that's the simple process that's theabbreviated process of how i went fromno software developer to softwaredeveloper so let's start with that firstphase that i would really call thelearning the fundamentals phase so thatpart where i was just going through thehead first javascript and learning aboutjavascript is what i would call learningthe fundamentals would i do thatdifferently the answer is no actuallythat's one of the few things i would dothe same i see people get this wrong allthe time because they pick tutorialsthat really kind of skim over thefundamentals and they start getting intoprojects and if they don't really knowthe fundamentals well it's just a recipefor disaster learning the fundamentalsbasically means two things it means alearning syntax so the rules of aspecific programming language and then bwhich is the harder part how to thinklike a programmer so programmaticthinking problem solving thinking interms of steps the best advice i cangive you as far as learning thefundamentals is pick a single learningresource that is high quality meaningthat's carefully cultivated and thatrequires you to engage with the materialone of the reasons the head firstjavascript book is so darn effective isbecause not only does it sort of likehold your hand through a lot of some ofthe more simple concepts but along theway it is constantly asking you toparticipate by doing little challengesand activities for example in the headfirst javascript book when they'reactually teaching you about arrays theydefinitely take their time to explainwhat an array is but then they also haveyou do a challenge like this that reallyhelps you to break down and really workwith materials that become second natureso look i personally recommend the headfirst javascript book as an excellentplace to start but you can chooseanything that is a high quality and bthat requires your engagement beingengaged and actively doing somethingwhile you're learning is the key tolearning anything so get off your buttright now get engaged and go down belowand smash like button so you can learnas fast as possible and also get newvideos when i put them out alright sothe next phase of the process oflearning to code for me was actuallybuilding a tetris application thequestion there is would i do that overagain so this one actually the answer isno i would not build the tetris app allover again tetris is a very complexapplication it has a lot of moving partsand for a new developer this is going tobe very challenging and look whiledefinitely setting that bar high foryourself is a good thing it's actuallybetter to progressively build yourselfup to something complex like tetris justlike if you had a goal for running amarathon which is 26 miles you wouldprogressively build yourself up to it somaybe you'd start off with running maybeone two or three miles and each weekyou'd progress up to that that's thesame basic idea this means that i wouldhave built simpler apps like a to-do appor a recipe app or a note-taking app ora pomodoro timer or an expense trackerthe reason i take that approach now isbecause i've seen especially with a lotof my clients who follow this process isthat because they're using their skillsin different contexts and tryingdifferent things they develop a strongerskill set but they also better preparethemselves for more complex projectsbecause when you start to understandthings in smaller projects it makes alittle bit easier to handle all of thecomplexity later on and also you learnto get frustrated and deal with yourfrustrations way before you get to someof the complex projects the next phaseof my journey was learning that secondprogramming language which was c sharpin that case so the question is if i hadto do all over again would i learn csharp againso the answer is yes butyes i would definitely have myself learnc-sharp again because i learned a lot ofthings that i couldn't have learned injavascript the object-oriented nature ofit it's much more of an object-orientedparadigm and also the statically typednature and just there's so manydifferent things about just the netframework i learned somuch but here's the thing i would haveactually started applying as i waslearning c sharp so even yes i learned csharp it helped me to land my first jobbut honestly i think i was ready atabout the six month mark to startapplying for jobs it eventually took mea year and i don't think i needed to gothrough the process of learning c sharpit was certainly helpful to help bolstermy resume so i would continue learningthat second programming language as istarted applying for jobs if i didn'tend up getting a job i would go back tothe drawing board and maybe focus alittle bit more on that secondprogramming language so the last phaseof my journey was the job hunt and youthink because i landed my first job inmy very first interview that there'd beabsolutely nothing i changed i did itperfect but that's not true at all ichanged pretty much everything obviouslyas i mentioned i think i waited way toolong to start applying i think i couldhave got a job at the six month mark iwas ready so we already rehashed thatthe second thing is i did a terrible jobof interview preparation that's soimportant now i was very lucky that igot hired by a company that wasn't verytraditional in how they hired theirsoftware developers instead of havingthem do like whiteboarding interviews orasking them random questions about aprogramming language they brought me inwe talked a little bit of technicalthings but then we they just really hadme do a take-home project and apparentlythe take-home project was good enoughand that was really my strongest skillthat it landed me a job but now lookingat the atmosphere for self-taughtdevelopers you have to be much moreprepared than that so the first thingthat i would do differently about thejob hunt now is that would practiceinterviewing so what i noticed aboutgoing to the interview process is that iwas very nervous i had really goodskills but when you go into interviewyou're unsure of yourself you don't wantto look silly and the problem is isbecause you haven't practiced thoseskills in a very similar situation whereyou're feeling a little bit nervous whenyou get in the interview it's like thefirst time the nerves hit you you'refeeling very uncomfortable so now iwould practice interviewing all the timei would have my girlfriend interview iwould have my parents interview me i hadother people i knew interview me just toget in that sense where you're feelingvery very comfortable with things andthe second thing i would do differentlyis i would practice leak coding and hackrate problems much more regularly backthen in 2014 i did maybe five or tenhackering problems and i was like okay igot it i understand how it works but youdon't realize that you need to actuallygo into it feeling very confident thatyou can do a hacker rank problem infront of someone else and that onlycomes from a repeated practice over andover and over again so if i was in thejob hunt phase i would be focusing ondoing that about two hours a day toreally build up those muscles so you'reconfident when you go into an interviewso look as you can see there's a lotthat goes into learning to code to thepoint where you are a professional so ifyou're in the same position i was backin 2014 you're learning this on your ownyou want additional support and guidancei have a paid mentorship program that ifyou're interested in joining i willleave a link in the description below ofhow you can do that so other than thatthat's all i've really got thank you somuch for watching and peace outeverybody