Hi, my name is Rahul and I am an aspiring web developer, a husband, and a Father 😀
I have a full-time job in finance and accounting and I am learning to code to change my career. In this blog, I will try to put forward my journey from a history graduate to learning web development. I will share my challenges and burnouts, I will also share how I have been coping with it.
It's never too late to start…
If you are contemplating that you are too old to start or should you start from scratch after having many years of experience in another field, then you are not alone. Even I had this feeling, but when I did my research on the internet, I was amazed to see many people successfully changed careers in their late 30's, 40's or 50's.
I am starting my journey in mid 30's😁
Everything which I have done professionally so far is never planned. I have always adapted to the situation and kept working towards getting better. But Web development is different.
why?
It all started with imposter syndrome, Surprised!!
You must be wondering, isn't this supposed to start after you start learning to code.
Let’s find out…
Blessing in disguise…
Due to COVID last year was not so pleasant for all of us, but for me, it was life-changing as I became the father of my first child, and believe me I can't explain in words how that feeling was 😃
After becoming a father, I don't know what happened to me and I started doubting my ability to provide for my family. I started thinking I am not good enough and I have failed as a husband and as a father.
I knew I have to do something to come out of this feeling. So, I started exploring other career options, however, I had to put this thought aside for few months due to my wife's unexpected surgery 😩
Back in Nov, I started again, First I thought I will do CPA(charted professional accountant) but it didn't work out for me, then my second choice went on the Business analyst. I almost bought a micro degree program on Coursera, but when I took a second opinion from my wife and friend I dropped that too.
She knew, I can do it…
My wife always knew that how happy I felt talking about the applications I built on MS Excel. Yes, I have been doing VBA (Visual basics for application) coding to automate repetitive tasks for many years. Some of my applications are still being used in my previous workplace. I have done the Lean Six Sigma green belt which was the result of one of my applications.
So, one fine day back in Dec last year, my wife asked me, why don't I look something in coding? She said, "I know you can do it as you like solving problems through technology, so give it a try." There my research started and I stumbled upon www.nocsdegree.com, I started following some of the stories and I found them very inspiring. One of the stories mentioned ZTM (zero to Mastery). I started reading about ZTM and Andrei Neagoie, I really liked his introduction video of the web dev course, so I bought it.(He has a course on Udemy also)
On Jan25th 2021, I took 2 weeks vacation, and I started learning WebDev. I never talked about it until I completed 2 to 3 months of regular study, as I had a fear that I might drop it, like many other courses which I bought on Udemy and never completed. But, it's been more than 5 months and I am still holding up and standing strong despite having very little time (barely an hour daily) to study as my son is very young and he needs my undivided attention.
How I study and what resources I follow…
My day starts at 6 AM and ends at 11:30 PM, after coming from work, I give my full attention to my son and keep waiting for him to go sleep so that I can study…hehehe... I have completed 60% of the ZTM WebDev course and more than 50% of FreeCodecamp. I have also completed the SoloLearn JavaScript certification recently. I use sololearn only when I am traveling to work.
I can see a good improvement in me. I have started getting Javascript basics concepts and now I am slowly progressing towards the advanced concepts. I have been making small projects and updating them on github.
Burnouts😩
I have had several burnouts when I was not able to understand some of the JS concepts.
what I did was, I took a break and started doing something on HTML and CSS and came back again and I was able to understand. I think taking a break in between is very important as it refreshes your eyes and brain which reduces the stress and gives you a fresh perspective.
My 2 cents…
My advice to newbie's like me is, "don't rush" as you may cover several topics, but you will keep forgetting as well. Javascript is not an easy language, and you won't get it in just a few weeks of study. I think learning to program is like mathematics, if you stop practicing it, you will lose it. I have been learning JS slowly and steadily and I have made small projects too. The best part of project-based learning is, you register the concept in your brain and you never forget it. My small projects helped me to understand basic concepts of loops, array, if-else, switch, DOM manipulation, and functions, etc.
The other very effective way of learning is blogging, and soon I am also planning to do one😀
Community
Whatever I have learned so far in my entire career is from google and the community, so networking is very important. I found twitter very helpful for networking and tons of knowledgeable people out there. Recently I posted one question about Hoisting and several developers came forward with an explanation. The best part is, it’s all Free!!
Thank you.
This is my first ever blog and I know I need lots of improvement, I assure you with every blog I will improve. Please don't hesitate to give me your feedback or suggestions.
I will keep sharing my journey and learning through blogs. You can follow me on Twitter and you can see my projects on github.
https://github.com/rahult-rt , https://twitter.com/rt_coder
Thank you, world!!
Top comments (0)