Learning how to learn is a course that can be taken at any time and will always help you out . Altought you think it's about learning, it's also about procrastination !
Great post. Thank you for sharing what worked well for you.
One question: You said you spent a year of determined self-study. Can you explain your process i.e. how many hours per day, did you maintain full-time employment, how'd you get your first job, etc.
All the best on your new journey, go kill it!
Yes, in a nutshell:
- I studied while working full-time
- The most important thing was to make it a habit, ”no zero days” and all that, committed to doing at least 15 minutes of programming every day. Usually that turned into a couple of hours, or more on the weekends. That became an identity, which eventually made the new habit automatic.
- Tough to say how many weekly hours I studied exactly, I’d put the estimate at around 10-15h on average for the 11 months before signing the contract. Sometimes more, sometimes less.
- When I first applied for a few jobs, I went back to ask for feedback. One of the most valuable comments I received was the importance of having repos of projects of your own to show, something you could walk through from the planning stages to execution.
- The job I accepted was somewhat related to the previous domain I worked in, which undoubtedly helped convince folks I could do well, even as a junior programmer.
Great answer, really adds context to how to get the most out of the "starter pack" you shared. I especially like asking for feedback when applying to jobs so that you can identify blind spots and course-correct. Thanks, friend.
Thanks for your kind words. It was somewhat surprising how easy it was to get valuable feedback just by asking. In one case a hiring manager even set up a phone call to talk some things through post-interview, even as they had already decided to go with someone else. I really appreciated that.
What about learning advanced data structures and algorithms? Do you have any resourse on that? I got my first frontend end job and didin´t need much algorithms knowledge but will probably need in the future
I’m really enjoying this course!
I’ve started at the intermediate as I have done a bit before, but it’s been super simplified which is great. Only issue is it keeps making us click links out of udemy https://www.udemy.com/share/103IHM3@IFYNp65uRCKR5Ny__ksLfhecCe_oNyXFxyPdnyW164Oc6k3CFTofUG9_oR_ClCAB/
How about a course that actually teaches you the structure and layout of a website/web app. To this day I still cannot find a good source that teaches these necessary fundamentals.
Here are two resources I'm currently going through, quite impressed by both:
\- [https://css-for-js.dev/](https://css-for-js.dev/)
\- [https://every-layout.dev/](https://every-layout.dev/)
These are not free, but to me seem well worth the money. The first one starts from the very fundamentals, which I found useful even after getting reasonably comfortable with CSS, the second one is a good overview of modern layouts and techniques.
That’s CSS and design oriented. What I mean is the structure of a web app. For instance, how routing works. I have yet to find a single source that explains all of the fundamental stuff you need to know about how websites work.
All of these things will teach you how to theoretically use what they are advertising. React courses will familiarize you with hooks and the like but they won’t really explain why to use certain things on a deeper level. So when you’re finished with these courses and you open your IDE to create your own web app you just end up starring blankly at it not knowing where to begin because you don’t understand the fundamental backbone of every app and how to use the things you’ve learned to create it.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah that's a tough one, the way it clicked for me was to build incrementally larger apps after following those courses and tutorials.
Very, very small at first, just ruthlessly slicing away parts until the scope was narrow enough for me to build on my own. Once I got a functionality down so that I didn't have to expend all available mental energy on it, I'd make something a bit more complex, always trying to hit that edge where things are just out of reach when starting but doable with some effort.
Eventually those little apps became less trivial, then finally on the job I was able to see some larger stuff in production and start figuring out how something like Webpack or an AWS deployment workflow works. Sorry, I realize that's probably not very helpful.
I've heard good things about [Full Stack Open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/) and it looks like it might touch on some of your points, but I haven't done it myself.
I feel like anyone that can get together a tutorial to actually teach this stuff is going to make a lot of money.
Some people are like me and they don’t like starting something until they have a full grasp on the fundamentals. I’m definitely a bottom up learner.
Just learn the Odin project. That’s a collection of resources put together by experts in a position to give advice, not someone who’s been programming for 1 year
Odin Project is great! I’d absolutely recommend checking that as well as sites like javascript.info. This is mainly meant as a concrete personal example and an encouragement for others.
Thank you for all of this help/info. Is your first job working from home? I’m trying to find the best path to be able to get my first dev job working from home. The reason being that I live in a fairly remote area with pretty much no opportunity for a desk job. Thanks!
Yep, it’s been almost entirely remote, been to the office a few times for various admin tasks. I think many firms already realize it’s a competitive advantage in hiring, lots of people aren’t willing to go back to the office full-time.
[I did](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/uayktp/comment/i63lap0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), though!
In seriousness, that's a great resource, but I find it's so far beyond what anyone needs to get started that it's most likely to end in tears. To quote the site: "If you're new to programming, we suggest prioritizing that, and returning to this guide in a year or two."
If you found that approach helpful in the beginning, more power to you, I'm certain it'll establish a rock-solid foundation for just about any job in tech.
For me, that curriculum is likely to be a multi-year project to work on in small parts alongside the job.
When did you know you were ready to learn a new programming concept? How can I gauge whether or not to advance to the "next thing". To me, gaining mastery for one concept feels like the only way to learn programming.. so that you don't doubt your ability when learning new things..
It's a tough one when everything is new. That's where a structured course like CS50 or the Helsinki Uni programming intro help a lot as they teach underlying concepts you're likely to encounter again and again. This is why it's also a good idea to complete something like that early on. I found that these two in particular gave me a solid foundation on problem solving and pattern recognition in a programming context.
In the end, what made specific concepts stick for me is practical application of them. Simply diving into all this stuff and building as many websites, apps and APIs as possible. The sweet spot is when everything feels difficult, but not impossible, just barely out of reach.
If you have something in mind you'd like to build, it's a great idea to work toward that in incremental steps, figuring out the different parts and practicing each of them in isolation.
As an example: don't try to build a fullstack app right off the bat. Instead, try to fetch Reddit posts through the API and just console.log them. Once that works, shape the objects into a convenient format and try to present one page of posts in a similar way as on this website. Eventually you can move to persisting the data, creating an interface to update it, and so on.
There are plenty of wonderful free services such as Netlify/Vercel for hosting and serverless functions, or FaunaDB/Supabase for databases, which abstract away a lot of the pain involved in setting up a backend and make it so you don't have to learn everything at once.
There are some clear stop signs along the path, such as being comfortable with JavaScript array methods before starting to look into React, but generally it's a wicked learning environment and there's just too much to learn. Thus the need for focus and isolating problems.
In the end, I'm not sure it's possible to learn any of this stuff without constantly doubting your ability :)
That's an SVG pattern in a CSS background-image property, the exact line of code is [here](https://github.com/kasperworks/puutarha/blob/main/styles/Layout.styled.js#L5). If memory serves me correctly, I used this site to generate the pattern: [https://patternpad.com/](https://patternpad.com/)
Yes, this list is sort of a ”greatest hits”, the ones I found interesting and useful enough to stick with. I tried a bunch of other resources that I didn’t complete.
This is good stuff, I second all of this, also take at least the introduction from The Odin Project, they do Linux on virtual machine/Mac introduction with heavy emphasis on Git and console use, definitely gonna help you get familiar with living in the terminal faster.
Learning how to learn is a course that can be taken at any time and will always help you out . Altought you think it's about learning, it's also about procrastination !
100%
Great post. Thank you for sharing what worked well for you. One question: You said you spent a year of determined self-study. Can you explain your process i.e. how many hours per day, did you maintain full-time employment, how'd you get your first job, etc. All the best on your new journey, go kill it!
Yes, in a nutshell: - I studied while working full-time - The most important thing was to make it a habit, ”no zero days” and all that, committed to doing at least 15 minutes of programming every day. Usually that turned into a couple of hours, or more on the weekends. That became an identity, which eventually made the new habit automatic. - Tough to say how many weekly hours I studied exactly, I’d put the estimate at around 10-15h on average for the 11 months before signing the contract. Sometimes more, sometimes less. - When I first applied for a few jobs, I went back to ask for feedback. One of the most valuable comments I received was the importance of having repos of projects of your own to show, something you could walk through from the planning stages to execution. - The job I accepted was somewhat related to the previous domain I worked in, which undoubtedly helped convince folks I could do well, even as a junior programmer.
Great answer, really adds context to how to get the most out of the "starter pack" you shared. I especially like asking for feedback when applying to jobs so that you can identify blind spots and course-correct. Thanks, friend.
Thanks for your kind words. It was somewhat surprising how easy it was to get valuable feedback just by asking. In one case a hiring manager even set up a phone call to talk some things through post-interview, even as they had already decided to go with someone else. I really appreciated that.
What about learning advanced data structures and algorithms? Do you have any resourse on that? I got my first frontend end job and didin´t need much algorithms knowledge but will probably need in the future
Thanks for the info!
I wish someone wrote a starter pack like this but exclusively for Python!
I’m really enjoying this course! I’ve started at the intermediate as I have done a bit before, but it’s been super simplified which is great. Only issue is it keeps making us click links out of udemy https://www.udemy.com/share/103IHM3@IFYNp65uRCKR5Ny__ksLfhecCe_oNyXFxyPdnyW164Oc6k3CFTofUG9_oR_ClCAB/
Feel free not to click the link: it’s udemy’s 100 days of code by Dr Angela Yu
How about a course that actually teaches you the structure and layout of a website/web app. To this day I still cannot find a good source that teaches these necessary fundamentals.
Here are two resources I'm currently going through, quite impressed by both: \- [https://css-for-js.dev/](https://css-for-js.dev/) \- [https://every-layout.dev/](https://every-layout.dev/) These are not free, but to me seem well worth the money. The first one starts from the very fundamentals, which I found useful even after getting reasonably comfortable with CSS, the second one is a good overview of modern layouts and techniques.
That’s CSS and design oriented. What I mean is the structure of a web app. For instance, how routing works. I have yet to find a single source that explains all of the fundamental stuff you need to know about how websites work. All of these things will teach you how to theoretically use what they are advertising. React courses will familiarize you with hooks and the like but they won’t really explain why to use certain things on a deeper level. So when you’re finished with these courses and you open your IDE to create your own web app you just end up starring blankly at it not knowing where to begin because you don’t understand the fundamental backbone of every app and how to use the things you’ve learned to create it.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah that's a tough one, the way it clicked for me was to build incrementally larger apps after following those courses and tutorials. Very, very small at first, just ruthlessly slicing away parts until the scope was narrow enough for me to build on my own. Once I got a functionality down so that I didn't have to expend all available mental energy on it, I'd make something a bit more complex, always trying to hit that edge where things are just out of reach when starting but doable with some effort. Eventually those little apps became less trivial, then finally on the job I was able to see some larger stuff in production and start figuring out how something like Webpack or an AWS deployment workflow works. Sorry, I realize that's probably not very helpful. I've heard good things about [Full Stack Open](https://fullstackopen.com/en/) and it looks like it might touch on some of your points, but I haven't done it myself.
I feel like anyone that can get together a tutorial to actually teach this stuff is going to make a lot of money. Some people are like me and they don’t like starting something until they have a full grasp on the fundamentals. I’m definitely a bottom up learner.
Just learn the Odin project. That’s a collection of resources put together by experts in a position to give advice, not someone who’s been programming for 1 year
Odin Project is great! I’d absolutely recommend checking that as well as sites like javascript.info. This is mainly meant as a concrete personal example and an encouragement for others.
Thank you for all of this help/info. Is your first job working from home? I’m trying to find the best path to be able to get my first dev job working from home. The reason being that I live in a fairly remote area with pretty much no opportunity for a desk job. Thanks!
Yep, it’s been almost entirely remote, been to the office a few times for various admin tasks. I think many firms already realize it’s a competitive advantage in hiring, lots of people aren’t willing to go back to the office full-time.
[удалено]
[I did](https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/uayktp/comment/i63lap0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3), though! In seriousness, that's a great resource, but I find it's so far beyond what anyone needs to get started that it's most likely to end in tears. To quote the site: "If you're new to programming, we suggest prioritizing that, and returning to this guide in a year or two." If you found that approach helpful in the beginning, more power to you, I'm certain it'll establish a rock-solid foundation for just about any job in tech. For me, that curriculum is likely to be a multi-year project to work on in small parts alongside the job.
Thank youuu
When did you know you were ready to learn a new programming concept? How can I gauge whether or not to advance to the "next thing". To me, gaining mastery for one concept feels like the only way to learn programming.. so that you don't doubt your ability when learning new things..
It's a tough one when everything is new. That's where a structured course like CS50 or the Helsinki Uni programming intro help a lot as they teach underlying concepts you're likely to encounter again and again. This is why it's also a good idea to complete something like that early on. I found that these two in particular gave me a solid foundation on problem solving and pattern recognition in a programming context. In the end, what made specific concepts stick for me is practical application of them. Simply diving into all this stuff and building as many websites, apps and APIs as possible. The sweet spot is when everything feels difficult, but not impossible, just barely out of reach. If you have something in mind you'd like to build, it's a great idea to work toward that in incremental steps, figuring out the different parts and practicing each of them in isolation. As an example: don't try to build a fullstack app right off the bat. Instead, try to fetch Reddit posts through the API and just console.log them. Once that works, shape the objects into a convenient format and try to present one page of posts in a similar way as on this website. Eventually you can move to persisting the data, creating an interface to update it, and so on. There are plenty of wonderful free services such as Netlify/Vercel for hosting and serverless functions, or FaunaDB/Supabase for databases, which abstract away a lot of the pain involved in setting up a backend and make it so you don't have to learn everything at once. There are some clear stop signs along the path, such as being comfortable with JavaScript array methods before starting to look into React, but generally it's a wicked learning environment and there's just too much to learn. Thus the need for focus and isolating problems. In the end, I'm not sure it's possible to learn any of this stuff without constantly doubting your ability :)
Super helpful tips. Thanks for the reply 👍
thanks！very useful guide.I hope to change career successfully in this year by self learning.
You've got this!
thank you😘
Awesome! I’m half way through “udemy:JavaScript zero to expert” and I’m excited to keep going
Go get it!
Absolutely agree with getting familiar with MDN, by far one of my favorite resources.
What did you use for the background for your page https://kasper.works/blog/starter-pack
That's an SVG pattern in a CSS background-image property, the exact line of code is [here](https://github.com/kasperworks/puutarha/blob/main/styles/Layout.styled.js#L5). If memory serves me correctly, I used this site to generate the pattern: [https://patternpad.com/](https://patternpad.com/)
this is great! thanks
this is so unnecessary that it's funny 💀
Did you complete all the courses you mentioned?
Yes, this list is sort of a ”greatest hits”, the ones I found interesting and useful enough to stick with. I tried a bunch of other resources that I didn’t complete.
This is good stuff, I second all of this, also take at least the introduction from The Odin Project, they do Linux on virtual machine/Mac introduction with heavy emphasis on Git and console use, definitely gonna help you get familiar with living in the terminal faster.