What I’ve Learned — From Zero Coding Skills to My First Developer Award
If you told me I’d be in technology a few years ago, I wouldn’t have believed you. In fact, two years ago I didn’t even know how to code. But last May I found myself receiving Microsoft’s first Windows Developer Award for my first app, and the software landscape has become increasingly awesome in the months that followed.
I believe there were a few key decisions that were crucial to my journey so far (which is far from finished) and I wanted it to share it with anyone who may be getting started in this space. So let’s get to it!
Take Your Time & Explore! Your First Language Does Not Matter.
In my first month learning coding, I played with Python doing console applications. In the next couple of months, I used JavaScript and PHP to make content management systems. Then, for a few months I stuck with Java and built a few (awful) Android Applications. Today, the language I use the most is C#, and I build Virtual and Augmented Reality experiences using Unity.
This back and forth was essential for my learning process. You have to be okay taking your time and switching gears when you’re not having fun — and realize that no knowledge is lost when you do so. In fact, this back and forth has helped me understand programming languages more holistically, as I started to see all the things languages had in common and all the things that set them apart.
Don’t commit to a particular language just because you’ve spent a few months on it or because “this language has market demand” — only commit when you find yourself consistently having a good time and see no reason to turn back (or when you’ve found your industry of choice and it runs on a particular language).
Focus On A New, Rising Industry
I cannot understate how important this was for me and continues to be today. If you’re in a new industry (such as VR/AR, Crypto, etc), you’ll find yourself in a much more even playing field — after all, everyone who’s in it is still figuring things out. In cases like this, effort matters more than experience and within a short time-span you can become one of the most knowledgeable players in your space simply due to your willingness to focus on it while everyone’s busy doing other things — unlocking a myriad of relevant development skills in the process.
Communities in rising industries also tend to be small and full of passionate people, making it easy to network with your peers as they’ll be approachable and looking to collaborate.
Overall, this tends to be a great long term move and it also makes work more fun: new industries have less standards, lots of unknowns and opportunities for innovation. It won’t be long before you discover that you can have an active voice in your industry, helping shape it in its early stages.
Hackathons Are Your Biggest Ally
One of the defining moments for me as a beginner developer was when I decided to attend hackathons en masse. These 24-to-48 hour sprints allow you to meet up with a bunch of strangers and build a product from the ground up, and I loved it so much I made it a rule to go to at least 3 of these a month.
This is a huge playground that will help you find the side of technology you’re truly passionate about. I used hackathons to build Web Apps, Rapping A.I. Bots, VR Games, Phone Apps, AR Tools, Killer Robots and so much more. About 6 months into my spree, I realized that VR/AR was the thing that excited me the most, so I shifted to C# and started focusing on it full time.
Hackathons are also hugely empowering events— once you realize that you can finish basic products in a weekend, you feel much more comfortable taking larger projects later on. You also learn a lot about scope: your first Hackathon ideas will be overly-ambitious, but as you attend these events regularly you’ll adapt the size of your ideas to your skillset and vice-versa — which will be an essential skill going forward.
Money Can Wait — Make Things You Want & Truly Care About
When I started off creating my projects on the side, I first attempted to make things that sounded financially profitable from the get-go. I had a bunch of crazy ideas I liked, but didn’t think they were profitable, so I didn’t pursue them.
A few months later, to no surprise, I realized that nothing I was doing excited me. Yeah, it had financial potential, but it didn’t have my unique perspective of the world in it, nor did it involve things I was passionate about. The projects were good, but generic, and anyone else could have built them. So I scrapped my ongoing projects and set myself a simple, new rule: “forget about profitability” (don’t worry, this will make sense in a second).
This was a turning point for me creatively. Of course, this is easier said than done — I still had to do contract work to meet my financial obligations, but whenever I was building something on my own, be it at home or at a hackathon, it was something weird that got me ridiculously excited. Like little kid on Christmas excited.
It turns out that judging ideas on initial profitability alone is one of the largest ways to obliterate creativity. In the months that followed, I created some of the weirdest and most fun things I have ever made in my life. A VR game where you play as a limbless broken toy. An immersive application that creates psychedelic worlds out of songs. A mobile game that’s controlled by facial expressions of the user… and much more.
These projects worked because they were extensions of my personality, and that helped me stand out from other developers with much more experience and skill who work on more generic everyday applications. But most importantly, these projects helped me find my own angle in technology —with every completed project you learn more about what challenges you’re truly into.
If you do this for long enough, you’ll soon stumble upon a creative idea that’s awesome, unique to you and also profitable. And by doing creative software that’s true to you as an individual, you’ll also be exposed to design challenges that other developers rarely come across — helping you amass rare knowledge highly relevant to you (consequently making you a one-of-a-kind developer).
Finish Things! And Start Small
So you’ve coded for a while, attended hackathons, gotten ambitious and have great ideas — but before getting your hands dirty on a larger dream project, let me make one thing clear: finishing projects is crucial to your learning process. There’s a number of challenges, development realities and lessons that you can only overcome when developing things all the way to its polished end, and the experience you gain will prepare you for the next, bigger project.
So control your expectations and narrow down the scope of what you’re building to its most basic form. Finishing projects is hard and always more challenging than expected, so you don’t want to set yourself up for failure and abandon them in mid-development (which is a huge morale killer).
When initially developing MyLab. I had so many ideas for it. The atoms would have faces and personalities depending on their element type, users would get fun quests to learn concepts like “set up a dinner date between Sodium and Chloride so they can bond”. All of it was cut in favor of a very simplified vision of the project — one that I could actually make. It still won an award, and by making it all the way to the end I was exposed to difficult challenges I never expected.
The next project I released, CyberSnake, was slightly more challenging than the first, and it was also full of great ideas I had to remove. Same with the one after that, and the one that followed.
So do projects all the way to the end and keep things as simple as possible, but increasing in complexity with every new project. Things are always more complicated than what they initially look, and the only way to build this awareness of challenge and scope is by finishing things to its end. Plus, people are likely to take you much more seriously as a developer.
Marketing Is Essential — And Painful
Market everything you make. People need to see what you’re building so you can get traction as a developer, meet other like minded creators and be known for your work. Get feedback from friends, share it on relevant subreddits, Facebook Groups, press, everything. As painful as this may be to perform, it’s essential, and ultimately, you need your projects to be seen so people that share your values can find you.
The best way to do that, in my experience, is by creating videos of your work. They’re easily shareable, can focus on the unique aspects of your application and viewers can easily see the value behind what you’ve made without effort.
And this is where it all comes together. If you’re making things you’re passionate about, it’ll show in the video and in every single conversation you have about your work. If you’re on a rising industry, your message is more likely to cause a bigger impact and you’re likely to be well connected. If you’ve been attending hackathons and industry events, you’ll know the people that can help you bring larger projects to the world. And if you have finished several apps while sticking to your passions and values, you’ll have amassed unique knowledge to share with everyone that surrounds you.
As cliché as it sounds, it all comes down to being true to yourself and having fun. And if you’re able to do work while sticking to those two things, it’ll be only a matter of time before you wow the world.
Thanks for reading!
Lucas Rizzotto is an award-winning Immersive Experience Designer, Artist and Creator.
You can follow him on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,or contact him through his website.
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