Zero to Web Developer — What the Path Looks Like
Learning how to build your own web applications is not easy. There are so many people who have tried to start their web development career by going through free online tutorials and lessons, but have failed to gain the skills necessary to start building your own applications. Why is it that there are so many free online resources for learning how to code, yet there are still very few people who can actually write their own web applications?
This is because learning how to code is a mental game. Without the right mentality, learning how to develop web applications will take more time than it should take, or you will fail.
The first step in becoming a web developer
The first step in becoming a web developer is to have a ton of motivation. You will face many error messages, many bugs, and many lines of code that you don’t understand. If you lack the motivation, you’ll give up after a couple of weeks and go back to being a non-coder.
That is why at TECHRISE, we pre-screen for candidates to join our training program. We know that motivation is the most important aspect of learning. We want to dedicate all of our time and effort to teaching those who are extremely motivated. This has worked extremely well and all of our students are very motivated and constantly exceed expectations.
Getting used to bugs and error messages
Once you know that you really want to learn how to code, the next step is to actually start coding. When you start coding, everything will seem foreign to you. You will go through tutorials, you will kind of understand the concepts, but you will always feel like you don’t understand everything 100%.
This is normal and the important thing is to keep moving forward. Many people quit at this stage — they start having doubts about their potential and talent as a programmer, and start thinking that coding isn’t for them.
You have to remember that every person who has learned programming has probably faced this in the past. Know that this is normal, don’t be discouraged, and keep moving forward.
In this stage, it is important to have a mentor or a friend to help you get past this stage. It can be very discouraging when you are starting out and see a bunch of bugs and error messages.
At TECHRISE, we provide personal mentors that will help you out whenever you need help. Students ask me questions all of the time with frustrated faces. But after we walk through the problem together, the student goes home with a big wide smile :)
Typos and Following Directions
When you are first starting out, the most important thing is to pay attention to the details and follow tutorials very closely.
Skipping one section of the tutorial will result in a bug later on, and mis-typing something will cause bugs and error messages immediately. For the first initial weeks of coding, the most important thing is to follow directions carefully and make sure that you are doing everything as is told.
Once you have started getting used to error messages and have coded for a couple of weeks, then you’ll start understanding the content of the lessons.
At this point, you will feel like this: “I understand the lessons, but if I were told to write the code myself, that would be impossible.”
For the first 3 ~ 8 weeks, you will be following tutorials and lessons, but you won’t feel confident enough to start writing your own code. This period is the most important phase in going from zero to web developer.
If you can get past this initial phase, you will be extremely close to getting to a level where you can start writing your own applications and start understanding more advanced concepts.
The point where you start to “get it”
After the initial phase, then there will be a certain point where you start feeling like you understand how everything works. You’ll start becoming able to solve problems that you haven’t been taught how to solve. At this point, no longer do you need tutorials to build things — you can tackle the problems yourself.
At this point, you can start learning more advanced concepts — and it will take a shorter time to learn. You can start building your own web applications, and you can start learning at a much higher pace.
At TECHRISE, we provide the education and community necessary to achieve this for all of our students. With 1 on 1 mentor sessions, an active student community, and a tested and constantly updated curriculum, TECHRISE students have a great environment to learn web development at an accelerated pace. Once the students have the power to start learning more advanced concepts themselves, they will be unstoppable.
After graduating TECHRISE, you will have a skill that they can use to provide value to people and organizations. You will have a means of making a good income. And most of all, you will have a passion that will last forever.
