The power of choosing
When you decide to learn to code it might be difficult to find out what to learn. At first, you have no clue.
Laurence Bradford from Learntocodewith.me has a fantastic overview on which skills you need to have to be a front-end developer. This is a good starting point.
Additionally, she links to an excellent youtube video (with a mind map) which also covers the back-end. The number of tools is quite daunting but you don’t need all of them.
When I began my journey in January, I just jumped head-first into two udemy video courses. The first one by Brad Hussey confused me a bit because he also covers Photoshop. As I run Linux, it’s complicated for me to install and I tried following up with Gimp which was frustrating. What I didn’t know is that Photoshop knowledge is not required to build websites. But the intro into HTML and CSS is pretty good.
I switched to Colt Steele’s Web Developer Bootcamp afterwards. After the mandatory HTML and CSS lectures, this course is purely focussed on Javascript. First you learn vanilla JS, then dip into jQuery. And don’t forget the server stuff with Node.js, Express.js etc.
As I wrote in my last post I hit a roadblock when it comes to coding on my own in Javascript. Some people suggested that I try a different language. I know that Ruby is a popular choice, as Ruby on Rails is in high demand for web developers.
Thus, I agonized over switching to another language yesterday. Should I stick to my guns or change gears? Javascript is more trendy since 2015 than Ruby but Ruby is semantically easier than JS. And it looks like there are more Javascript jobs in my area. (Although, if you go by that, I should learn PHP because indeed.com lists mainly PHP jobs.)
The book “No Degree, No Problem” by Josh Kemp also advertises Ruby. That is also true for some coding boot camps, i.e. Firehose or Viking School.
In the end, I realized that it doesn’t matter. I am wasting my time by analysis paralysis.
I am reminded of what Steven Chandler says in his book “Crazy Good: A book of Choices”:
Trying to figure out whether something is a “good decision” ahead of time can become an endless thought-maze to wander into. Besides, whether the decision is a “good one” is something I have a lot to say about after making the choice. If I choose to take a certain job, it’s my work at that job to make it a good decision. I can make it into a good decision by what I do and create after the choice.
You can find tutorials for both languages online. FreeCodeCamp has a curriculum focussed on JS. The Odin Project is a free resource for Ruby.
I just happen to have more material for JS. Plus, I already spent some serious time learning it (i.e. watching the whole Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts).
So, if you’re just starting out, research a bit which one you like better. It doesn’t make a big difference. You’ll eventually need to learn another language anyway. Then just choose one and learn it properly. Trying to decide what to learn is NOT learning.