Ground Zero, Or “D-Day”
I’ve been here before. “I’m going to learn to code, for real this time.” I’ve dipped my toes into various programming teaching websites, my Github account is littered with quarter-finished projects that I barely recognize at this point. But I’ve never accomplished my goal of not just knowing a couple of languages, but feeling comfortable saying that I am a programmer, or web developer.
Why do I want to be a web developer?
As long as I can remember, I’ve been tech obsessed. I built my first website when I was 11, an anti-horse slaughter site. I taught myself HTML, learned how to use Photoshop, launched and maintained online communities. I was a self-proclaimed IRC script kiddie in high school, and I called and ordered my own DSL line and then told my parents about it after the bill arrived.
My professional career has always danced around programming. I started out in community management, working in online gaming on a virtual world building platform that allowed anyone to code in a language based on Lua to create game interactions and share them with other users. I moved onto product management and always enjoyed creating specifications for developers and building things alongside them. As a Producer and Studio Director, I worked directly with engineers all day long to build iOS games. I pushed plist changes in Github, modified art assets, and handled all submissions to the App Store. My enjoyment of my work has always increased the closer I am to working with programmers.
I love building things. I’m an entrepreneur at heart, always launching Wordpress sites, blogging about things, trying to make extra side income through various digital marketing hustles (ranging from PPC advertising and affiliate marketing, to SEO, content marketing, and Kindle writing). At this point, my career could go a number of directions since my interests vary. But I’d like to be able to build whatever I want. Whether or not I end up working as a professional full stack web developer some day doesn’t matter. I want the skills.
Why web specifically? It’s where my interest lies. I’ve done more front-end development, but the little back-end I’ve done has been a lot of fun too. I know I don’t want to be an iOS or Android developer, and I don’t want to focus on game development specifically.
What do I already know?
My skills are varied and wide but don’t go terribly deep. I would say that I’m proficient-ish in HTML and CSS. I am reasonably comfortable with using the command line and pushing builds to Github and hosting prototypes on Heroku. I understand MVC frameworks and the basic idea of client-server interactions. It’s been a couple of years, but I went through Codecademy’s JavaScript and Python tracks. I also used Ruby on Rails to build a little Pinterest clone and feel reasonably comfortable with being able to Google my way through building something (though I never had to author much code in Ruby — I used gems and modified things). I can stand a Wordpress site up, modify themes, and understand how to read and mod PHP. I understand file systems and the concepts of sockets and web requests. I
My game plan
I’m going to modify my plan as I go, but my current method is to do a hybrid of free and paid methods of learning. This article that was recently posted seems like a great place to harvest for resources. Here’s what I’m currently thinking:
- Refresh myself on JavaScript by taking the Codecademy track, then learn Node JS to practice some backend stuff. And put it all together with Express and MongoDB in this tutorial.
- At this point, I’m going to think up a project and build a little ambitious something to solidify my skills.
- I’m then going to brush up on some advanced HTML and go deeper with JavaScript, learn jQuery, and React. I’ll also play around with Bootstrap. I’m thinking FreeCodeCamp for this.
- I’ll either revisit my project from #2 at this point, or create something new with my more advanced skills.
- From there, I’m not sure. We’ll see where this adventure takes me.
