Any advice for folks teaching themselves how to code? Thread below!

Being self - taught shows incredible dedication. Cheers to us!

My tips (musician -> developer): - Take great notes - can you explain a concept to yourself in a way that makes sense to you? Write it down! Clarity of writing translates to clarity of thought. - Sometimes it feels like you need to have a novel idea to start a project. I think we learn much better from imitation - take something you use every day and try to make a simple copy of it. Like moving to a new city, you'll be wander around and be lost for a good while before one day you suddenly realize that you know the place in and out. - Remember that we stand upon the shoulders of giants. You don't need to be brilliant to write great code, just endlessly curious!

My advice for people teaching themselves how to code is to figure out your "why". Why do you want to learn how to code? Your answer help ground you for the tough times; because learning how to code and breaking into the industry can be hard - but it's so worth it if you keep at it 😄

I'm just gonna leave this here. Step I: Trying and failing to leran php.(Way back like 2014) Step II: Stumbling onto Unity. Step III: Messing with Unity(C#) for a couple of years as a hobby . Step IV: Deciding to go serious and switching to web development by starting to learn Java and Spring. Step V: Switch careers in the middle of a pandemic to work from home. Took me a while but it was worth it, last year and a half working from home as junior web developer.

I'm self taught and over the course of 6 years I've worked my way up to multiple 6 figure positions, eventually earning the title of "senior" engineer. The most important single piece of advice I can give is CREATE STUFF! My portfolio of 5+ apps not only impressed interviewers, they gave me valuable experience with important concepts and my tech stack. Experimenting with a new library, especially when you make mistakes and have to fix bugs, that is where the learning takes place! Plus it really helped me squash my imposter syndrome-- I can tell myself "I know what I'm doing" because I have a body of work as proof, and thousands of people using my apps that started out as pet projects. Meanwhile I can humbly say "there's always room for improvement" because I've observed how my coding style improved from project to project. Something I just finished might seem like my best work yet but my next project will probably be executed even better. Never stop learning! Keep on coding!

I can give my personal experience. After I got out of the military I was a very messed up and angry individual. I isolated my self for a few years and luckily towards the end I made up my mind I was going to learn programming. I started with python and quickly learned that programming languages are really that, language and once you understand syntax you can quickly learn all the others. The trick was to make it relevant ie have a problem build a solution. After awhile I got to the point that I wanted to make a physical effect in the real world through software and that's when I got into microelectronics. Long story short, I am a self taught software engineer as well as a self taught electronic engineer no piece of paper that says I know what I'm doing only determination and results I now do consulting for several company's and all they cared about is can you do what we want.

I started by teaching myself web dev for about 7-8 months since March last year. Only a couple of hours a day and weekends, since I was working full time. Then I did a super intensive (usually more than 10 hours a day, no days off) 3 month iOS development academy from January to April this year following a recommendation from a friend in the field. Got an offer from the company that organised the academy 2 weeks later and I've been working as an iOS dev since May. Impostor syndrome is still a thing, and I'm not sure if it'll ever go away, but I'm loving the work and the team. My advice to anyone else self-teaching would DEFINITELY be to involve yourself in the community, especially in your country / area. Self-teaching coding is a lonely affair and knowing people will bring lots of opportunities your way.

"Maybe you're a retired Marine, you used to be a teacher, or studied criminal justice in college" Uh... did we talk before? LOL. I'm an 8 year Navy vet, became a teacher, and also studied criminal justice in uni.....

As someone who is only a week into the self taught route- I found this video extremely helpful and motivating!

Self taught myself started doing the concepts first. I can't emphasize how important it is to learn the concepts by heart. Coding will come easy if you know what to use. Play around with small projects. Find a mentor who will review your codes and will give you tips. Most importantly don't get intimidated by CS major students. Instead try to learn from them (if they are willing to teach lol). Baby steps go long way. Don't rush online videos. Instead do a weekly recap of the stuffs you learned throughout the week. Don't worry about the jobs. Once all the puzzle adds up, with patience work will show up.

It feels weird to see a video like this discussing education as the traditional route. As an older developer, in the 80's and even 90's the vast majority of developers in the field were self-taught, because that's all there was. Computer science degrees started popping up around this time as separate from mathematics in Universities. To think that the field is now so flooded with people taught in schools instead of self-taught, such that self-taught is rare feels wild.

I love the way you have articulated your thoughts, "I really think you learn what you need to learn at the time that you learn it". Thanks for the positivity into the community!

I believe everyone should be self taught to some extent when it comes to programming, there’s an infinite amount of things to learn which makes it inefficient to have some other person try to pour that knowledge into your head. I have a computer science degree and I taught myself different languages to supplement my school work. Also there are many new things I’m learning for my current job that I didn’t learn from school at all. Being self taught shouldn’t be an offshoot path it should be expected to some degree when it comes to coding in my opinion

Having a mentor that will inspire and push your limitations is so important. I'll be forever grateful to him.

Graduated with a BA in English, but have been in IT industry for 10+ years. Foundation of my career is OJT, online videos and self-teaching and practice with home labs. This is a great reaffirmation that "homegrown" professionals can have something valuable and unique to contribute to any team. And as always, "Hi Mayuko!"

Really needed this video right now. Thank you! I'm currently studying foundations of programming and seeing this is just more fuel for my goal of becoming a self taught programmer.

Thanks for having me! I had a great time during the interview sesh and at hanko hangouts!

Taught myself coding in 1982, still going 😊

You’re Still my favorite coding influencer on KZfaq. Always so natural and realistic in your delivery of content. I’d say best option Is combining 2 and 3. Self teach and enter a bootcamp to get exposed to actual work with a cohort and building projects is key. Coding or software development is the future especially if one wants full 100% remote work in comfort of your home 🏡

I taught myself how to code and now I am a Python Instructor. 😎 It's a long journey, but it's definitely worth it. 👍

Thank you for addressing this and sharing input from multiple self-taught developers. It’s reassuring to hear these thoughts and pieces of advice. I’m still in the beginning slope of my self-taught journey and these are definitely challenges that I face repeatedly. I still have to remind (and convince) myself that I can do this. I’ll be saving this video to come back to for the next time I have self-doubt.

I taught myself to write software, starting around 1980 or so, before I could even afford a computer. I was in junior high school (or middle school as some call it), and something about writing software caught my attention. This was at a time when we didn't have fancy things like IDEs or some of the sophisticated graphics we have today, and home computers were, frankly, pretty terrible. But, partly for fun, partly for the science museum to whom I donated my time so I could learn this sort of stuff, I wrote a database engine in BASIC for the TRS-80 III that could search through floppy disks of information for shells, if I recall. Since I did not have a computer of my own, I initially wrote it on lined paper with a pencil, then typed it into the computer. I didn't write software because I wanted to accomplish anything specific, but because I genuinely enjoyed the kind of puzzle-solving nature of the discipline. Today, I still love the kind of puzzle of building a set of objects that work together to accomplish various goals. I'm just fortunate folks seem to want to give me money to do this.

I just graduated from college last month and I've been on and off teaching myself how to code since 2019. Now that I'm done with school, I can finally self-teach full-time! I've been coding for 8 hours a day since mid August and I already have an interview next week to get into a software engineer program that will boost my skills 🙏anything's possible.

I tried to learn some HTML and CSS for my website but I definitely have trouble with even just that. I gotta learn more!

What is really fantastic about the tech/programming industry is you don't need any qualifications at all, just a good portfolio of projects. I'm in the UK and haven't a degree. I left school at 16. but now at the ripe old age of 54 I hold a Senior Principle Scientific Data Analyst role at a global Pharma. I spend most of my day coding in R which I taught myself before R was a thing but realised it had potential. All you need is curiosity and grift, and even if you only have a high school diploma you can make it in programming.

So true, the self-taught route is the cheapest but the hardest! How'd you structure the curriculum for yourself when you're new to the industry and can't even see the bigger picture of it? Even if you follow a uni curriculum, most people don't have the motivation to sit down and code every night after long work days.

What I did years ago (to change career): 1. Learn dbs and OOP; few community college courses on dbs and programming (Project-based learning) 2. Get a contract job & keep learning. 3. After 1-2 years of experiences, you can easily get well-paying SD job 4. Keep learning. In the self-taught path, getting a related job as quickly as possible is important in my opinion. If you attempt to do a lot of learning in one breath before getting a job, you are likely to give up.

I really love your videos, and somehow they always makes me feel more confident in my choice to work in software engineering. Thank you!

I really appreciate that you didnt just go off on a long monologue about self taught developers from a traditionally educated perspective. You did your homework, reached out and got perspectives from people who actually went through the process themselves to get more insight. At age 30, I thought I was really late to the game and I had no chance but I really needed to hear this. I just enrolled into a boot camp for next month.

Thank you for your insights. Even after a 15 year tech career it's easy to fall into those mental states that destroy your self confidence. Your videos shed the light on these issues, illuminating them so they are more easily overcome.

Whenever people say that you don't need a Computer Science degree, it just sounds like they undermine people with Computer Science degree

Great video! I’m going through this route right now for front end. I’m a Airforce vet coming from a help desk background.

Man Mayuko is just a breath of fresh air👌Thank you.

It's so nice listening to what the people you interviewed have to say in regards of being self taught, their experiences, what you would have to go through, etc. I'm also in the path of trying to get a job in tech 2023 and so far, no luck. But this video is giving me much needed motivation and inspiration. Thank you for this video! 🤧

Thank you. This is such a great and encouraging clip to watch.

Thanks for all these kind words; Am teaching myself how to code now. The facebook software developer is exactly right

I'm currently in a boot camp and thankfully I work as a bartender in a huge tourist/party city, so I'm able to work part time and focus on coding. A lot of the folks working full time have already dropped out of our cohort. I definitely needed the structure of a boot camp, anyone who becomes a software dev totally self-taught is super impressive.

What I have started doing as a self taught developer is basically go into boot-camp courses and look through the structure of their curriculum and from there create my own. This makes planning so much easier because you get to see how the workflow of different courses are executed and get a feel as to how you should approach your coding itinerary.

I am a self taught programmer. I learned on my own while recovering from a back injury that left me in chronic pain. I slowly learned python, data science, and moved onto a node JS mern stack web development. When I became comfortable enough to build my own apps from scratch I decided to start job hunting. I've been at it every day, 12 hours a day for over 18 months now and I am still struggling to get in. I am beyond burned out from it and I hate my life right now. All I want is to get employed so I can move on in my life and leave my toxic environment I am stuck in. Why is this so fucking hard? Why is everything I try to do end with rejection? why wont employers give me a chance? Why don't they see me as useful?

I've just gotten my first job as a Junior Software Engineer and I'm contemplating to start my CS degree while working full time. I'm definitely going to ask whether that makes sense or whether I should invest the time after work and on weekends into improving my coding skills.

Nice video, thanks. :) I'm personally unable to continue school due to economic reason and self-taught programming pretty early in my teen years. I started freelancing before I turned 20 and had a quite decent income in my first few years. In my third year of freelancing, I got hired full time and I still work in this company today, almost 10 years in. Being in a community do helps getting you started, not only that it's good to get feedback, but it's also valuable to help others as well. This will build up connection, reputation and most importantly, experience. That said, I was never in a proper hiring interview process ever. Being a freelancer at start, it isn't important to have any sort of degree. I guess I'm kinda lucky that the company offered me a full time job after a freelance job with them at the start. :)

Self taught programming is a must in my personal opinion. Why? It is fundamental to follow up the technology nowaday, still working on flutter frameworks. In fact i am not really good with javascript... and.... i still want to chase the career on flutter as a programmer. Wish to all self taught programmer be prosper!

I am almost completely self taught, but i learned programming over the course of 15 years. I normaly will learn what I need when I needed it. I cant say that I am very good at any off them, but I am very good at troubleshooting. I just started as a PLC programmer programing chemical blending systems, and Im killing it. It is SO much fun. I just get to solve problems all day :D

It’s easy to say “find a mentor”. but there’s only that many programmers would empathise and take us under their wings. I was hoping to hear some tools and place to start off with… besides brilliant. This is a pretty video with little practical help for those who wanna get started. :/

You just made me smile again Mayuko! Thank you, I've been struggling with my self confidence in becoming a software engineering, still looking to land that first job! I took about two years off, and regret it, but watching your video just gave me hope again!

The main problem with programmer jobs in general is: 1. Too many junior level engineers around. 2. Employer see junior engineer as investment, not asset. The harsh truth that no one talks about is most employer needs SENIOR level programmer, no one wants JUNIOR. All tutorials can do it to teach you to be a junior. I'm self taught myself, and my solution to those problems is to learn further and aim to be mid level. I won't recommend this though, to be at the same level as a CS graduate is already hard.

as a self-taught myself, I'm so happy I taught myself how to program back in 2015 :)

Don't sugarcoat it. Getting a degree is the fastest way to become a developer. Trust me, I have tried both

Thank you so much. I am in the process of being a self thought programmer I always doubt if the things I am learning will lead to a job at the end or it is not enough. This video is such a great inspiration for me.

I'm so happy that you uploaded a new video. Thank you so much! :)

Perfect 10/10 video. I really needed this. Thanks, Mayuko!

Thanks mayuko for the video!! Really an insightful and inspiring one.❤️

this is such an amazing and inspiring video Mayuko. Thank you so much. This appreciation coming from someone who is on his journey to become a self taught software developer!

I feel like in a way, we all are self-taught. Even in a traditional CS program, no professor or TA will hold your hand. That is not to take anything away from folks who are completely self-taught.

Ngl Ive been binge watching your channel since I started this self-taught route looking for a carrer change. Great content!

Thank you for putting this together!

What a wonderful video! I like a lot the idea of diversity 💜 I just missed one thing: in this career sooner or later everyone will have to teach themselves new "things" and this will be true for a long time 🐧 Regards!

In the end everyone becomes self teaching developer and that journey never ends

As a software dev that took a non-standard route (I studied business). Imposter syndrome is real, but the good programmers/managers DON'T expect you to know, they expect you to ask, google and be honest. Lean on your stronger soft-skills. My business degree and cyber qualifications definitely made me view my job differently. But also allows me to get more training than others. Take all the training you can get. You will need it for the long-run. It also allows me to talk to more customers and teams, hoovering up knowledge, so I feel I am learning at a quicker velocity that a CS guy who never leaves his desk.

I learn better the traditional way and I took that route to learn coding despite already having a career in a completely separate field for several years. As happy as I am that it all worked out and I was able to jump into a whole new career, the amount of school debt it left me makes me wish I was self-taught. 🤣

tip for learning to code: make programs to solve your own problems. or make programs to solve friends'/family's problems. e.g. a thing that batch renames files, or a gui for a set of excel data.

In general, I agree to the sentiment of this video. I basically taught myself programming before the internet came up through books while my classmates went out after school to party. I always played with Lego in my childhood and later on with computers which sparkeld that "Just look how I can play with this thing" idea in me. While graduating from a secondary business college where the only computer-thing we were taught was how to handle MS Word and Excel, I already played with VBA and later with VB around which I quickly dropped in favour of C/C++ and later on learned Java at university. Self-taught is a strechy word IMO as regardless of which way you learn, you at some point have to learn by yourself. Interest in the domain, analytical thinking and problem solving are for sure properties to have when pursuing this path. However, what I'm missing here a bit is that while learning programming isn't that difficult nowadays, mastering the engineering part and sticking to its principles is, especially when they are usually opt out in basic how to programm books, videos and trainings. Even many "trained" programmers or software engineers sometimes forget that they are creating products which need to be maintainable not only by you but also by others. Often times code either rots or is poorly documented or contains the wrong comments in it. I don't need a comment that is telling me that the next few lines are reading some data of some component, I already see that, but I want to know whether the code is threadsafe or has some other impacts that might not be on the radar. How code is written also depends on what kind of software you write. For simple CRUD applications most seasoned frameworks do provide small examples to copy from which allow fast progress, though usually also come with certain limitations and constraints. These are usually not of a big problem for tiny to medium-sized projects, for large projects though they are usually unusable for different reasons like different licensing approaches that don't coop with each other or no active development/bug-fixing schedules present. Code written for a high-performance application like a computer games involving fast-paced 3D graphics is for sure differently written than a typical 08/15 CRUD application and so on. Just compare talks of i.e. Jonathan Blow with ones given by Rober C. "Uncle Bob" Martin and you will see how different their approaches are to the development of games/applications. And finally, there is one aspect in modern-day software-engineering/programming that is hanging like a sword of Damocles in the air: Pragmatism. Often time-constraints will push you into a route where you don't do something the right way but the fast way. You basically take shortcuts to make the deadline. This is even something that superiors often demand and this is for sure not a good thing. Over the years I've met so many programmers who actually don't care enough anymore. They get a task, they try to solve it as quickly as possible and go on. If a year later that change leads to problem for the next developer it is considered his/her problem. A typical example here is to use library/dependency A as it get the job done somehow but you don't (want to) know how it works internally. Some time later you notice that the usage of this library/dependency leads to unexpected results in certain cases and now you are tasked to fix that issue. This is a thing I had to deal with a lot over the years. With enough luck you run into a situation where none of the existing stuff might solve your problem and you get the green light to do it on your own. Things though quickly get bad when the current toolset or toolchain does not allow you to progress further. I.e. at the moment I have to develop a custom extension for a well-known editor and we do need access to the charset of the text-files managed by that editor but the editor is simply preventing any access to that information. My only option is now to fork that whole project, customize it and force all of the employees to use my custom fork build rather than the one maintained by the officials. Decision-Takers however aren't interested in the overhead I need to put in, they just want me to get the job done ASAP. The last thing they want to hear is, that currently this is not possible.

Thanks ~ Although I did get a CS-related degree, still feel tons to learn. Anyway, why do I reckon western education is all about self-taught, especially in CS. There is no way that all the knowledge will be taught in 2/3 hours lecture. But I really appreciated the help from lecturers, TA and other resources, which may be hard to get on the self-taught pathway?

i just started learning 11 days ago and im in love with this comunnity

Thank you for this!

This was very helpful to me. I recently committed to the idea that I can actually become a software developer and after finishing my first project (that was very unsatisfactory) I kinda felt like this may not be the path for me and this video (alongside getting over that feeling) made realize its a journey and it takes time and I'm just a newbie. Thank for this content it really gave me some perspective. 👏🏾😄

Watched the entire vid. I really needed to see this today.. thank you so much

Thank you so much for sharing this! It gives me hope and motivation to continue learning! :)

This is wonderful. Exactly what I needed to see/hear today. Thank you! Question: Are you going to try and get to a Natalia Lafourcade show this year?

I felt so identified whit the "I just went through some 3 months of learning and had 4 years at my side" I completed a Python course in 3 months, was not sure were to go next or if I could do something at all, currently in a ML course!

Frankly i subscibe to ZTM academy life subscription and was wondering whether to go for a bootcamp to strengthen my coding skills.I will see how i progress on myself .Thank you for the video.I find it very beneficial.I am from Singapore.Nice to befriend you.

Thank you so much. Much needed words.❤

Hello Mayuko, this is a great video, thank you.

I will work hard to be like Mayuko

This was an amazing video and great much needed motivation to keep learning

This video was really helpful. Thanks!

remember learn from anywhere except social media like tik tok , twitter etc the will put you into jeopardy a

Thankyou mayuko, i needed this

Great content and background music 🎶

as a self Taught programmer .. Thanks for the motivation mayuko 😃 ,, you are amazing 🥳

Being a self-taught was not easy for me but t he fact that I have a background in civil engineering and study lots of math in college really help me pick up coding faster. I M preparing my coding interview at Microsoft and capital one. I also have an online learning platform where I upload free tutorials and projects fo free for people to use. Something I want to point out here is that If you really want to succeed on your career and become a better software engineer , you should learn algorithms and datastructure. Those will give you the fundamentals aspect you need as better problem solver I did it. Thanks for leaving a reply

The way I learned was to code within an existing environment that's tangential to a skill I already have (Javascript in Adobe Illustrator). One skill reinforces the other, and everything you do is immediately practical- I started creating tools to streamline my art workflow, and what I wanted to see provided the guidelines for how my study progressed. I graduated to the C++ SDK later. It's honestly really depressing how the video approaches this purely from the goal of getting a job in The Industry. Money is an impure motivator, it's an intermediary to getting something else. If you REALLY want to motivate yourself, figure out how to write code in a way that materially benefits you and not someone else. Programming is primarily a tool to create what money can't currently buy.

i think the most painful thing i learnt after working 24/7 on an idea for 2 years, and publishing my own app is that people will copy your idea and thee is nothing you can do about it. Right now i can‘t publish an amazing new feature for my app, because i have to think of ways to protect it first, so it‘s not like i designed, solved problems, and created an intuitive and amazing product just for other apps to copy it within a month or two. At least it will have helped me to find a job, but it‘s still frustrating to see my work copied shamelessly by so many..

Thanks for your videos! I love your style :)

Love the Chillhop loop, i listen to chillhop while studying or gaming. By the way, i shared this video to my 2 nieces who are interested in coding

Thanks for this. I needed it.

Thank you for this video, very inspiring

For anyone considering going back to school: I was able to maintain a Full time job and go to School Full time(software engineer track), but mostly because I went to a community college. At the time I did not realize that Community College would be less homework than a standard University. That said you still have to apply yourself and make sure you do your assignments early in case you have any questions or don't understand your assignment. I had great teachers at my CC, they did so well I actually liked Java so much I went for Java 2. Also make sure you find a job that doesn't mandate Overtime out of nowhere, that really caused a lot of stress for me and really affect my health. I transferred to a local University and this semester has been hell, a lot of unnecessary amounts of homework from my math courses lol Also not as many online courses so I can't even find a job to work around my schedule ):

i'm a self taught software developer. thanks you for complementing me :D

I like to learn by myself, with youtube videos and documentation. Motivation! I learn what I need in my own projects. So, my earnings motivate me . PD. I want a teacher like you😍

I was a skater when i was in elementary school and i learn to ride a skate in just about a week, then do ollie and kickflip 2 weeks but i do believe that, in order to become as good as any other pro skater i takes years of practice. i think its the same thing as coding, but more like in how to build program structure in you head before start typing.

I noticed that lately a lot of data scientists switch to software engineers. Can you talk about your opinion on this?

and i was just wondering if maybe u could have a programming tutorial series? idk anyw love you💛

I started in 2010 when I was in like grade 8-9, I played runescape and wanted to make my own game. I failed at runescape private servers (they had alot of viruses back then) and then i started playing samp and coding my own server, from there I was forced to learn linux (ubuntu & debian), mysql, and the web languages, now I'm a JavaScript God, I went to university in 2015 and did Computer Science, I learnt barely anything. I've already made over 5 React Native apps in the past year. Just find your passion and do it. If you aren't curious about something it's not gonna be easy, the more interested you are, like how I was into building my own servers, the more you'll learn and put effort.

Great video!!

How to actually connect with the community? I feel people in meetups aren't really interested in connecting, they come and chat, connect on linkedin, but don't really respond much afterwards

Good Video, i just want to tell: learning what you need to know is simple just take a week to learn a programming language and start to make project than when you have an idea to put into your project then to Google and you will be learning how somthing is used, so i have been learning, if someone working in the industry see this i would like to show my progess and so help me to make networking. Thank you.

Finding a mentor scares the hell out of me.. omg TTT

love that there was one Vietnamese teacher photo in your video that is about physics