Journey of being a Self-taught Coder

Being a self-taught programmer is not an easy journey, you will come across a lot of different challenges like, what field to choose, a lot of unanswered questions, uncertainty about what the future looks like for the field you pick, and trying to be consistent.

According to a developer survey “Lots of coders are self-taught”. The survey was completed by more than 50,000 developers from 178 countries.

There are a lot of Famous self-taught coders I am sure you have heard of. You must have heard about Jack Dorsey (Twitter), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Kevin Systrom (Instagram) and many others.

REASON WHY PEOPLE ARE A SELF TAUGHT CODER

There are many reasons people became self-taught programmer, I will list them below but first, why am I a self-taught programmer?

Yeah, I am a student studying Computer Science in College, but the quality of education in my country is very poor, and there is no good facility for tech enthusiasts.

I started my programming journey early after getting admission into College because I already know how poor my country's educational system is. A year so far in college and still haven’t been taught any programming language in College except QBasic which wasn’t taught well.

Others reason are:

1. High cost of college
2. Changing career path
3. Starting at a young age
4. and other reasons which I can’t remember as at this time.

WHY YOU SHOULD BE A SELF TAUGHT CODER

I am not trying to tell you to drop out of college or whatsoever, being a self-taught coder doesn’t mean not going to college or do not follow any instructor but what it simply means is that when you don’t wait for someone to take initiatives on behalf of yourself and get ready to excel the programming skills by any kind of means — whether it be training courses, books, videos, discussions, etc.

Reasons you should be a self-taught coder;

1. Being a self-taught coder help you become an expert in problem-solving.
2. It helps to understand things better how it works, because of being able to figure things out yourself.
3. You get to learn various algorithms and methodologies that won’t be taught in college and probably boot camps.

CHALLENGES FACED AS A SELF-TAUGHT CODER

As a self-taught coder or you just about to start your journey you have or you would face a lot of challenges, but that is what makes will make you different from other coders. I faced a lot of challenges too when I started my journey, but your determination, and being consistent is the key.

But as they said, there is no rose without thorns — this enticing journey of self-taught coder also comes up with several challenges.

Achieving the bare minimum in this world is challenging, waking up and trying to stay healthy is also challenging. The point is no matter the field or area you find yourself you would always come across challenges.

Let me list some challenges you would likely come across taken from https://www.geeksforgeeks.org;

1. Being able to Pick out the Worthwhile Learning Resources
2. Lack of Consistency throughout the Entire Learning Journey
3. Higher Chances of Impostor’s Syndrome
4. Lack of Social Interaction and Community Discussion
5. Not Being Eligible for Several Job Opportunities that Require a Proper Degree
6. Lack of Time Management
7. Thought of Giving Up in Mind
8. And a lot more, refer to https://www.geeksforgeeks.org to read more on this list.

I came across most of these challenges too, but like I said earlier determination and consistency are the key.

KEYS TO BEING A SUCCESSFUL SELF-TAUGHT CODER

I took some of the keys below from effectiveengineer.com;

1. Be fearless in diving into code you don’t know.
2. Look for the right resources for learning.
3. Master debugging.
4. Invest in time-saving tools.
5. Create a Timetable to manage your schedule.
6. Develop system-level thinking.
7. Always learning new things to developing your skills.

That is all for my stories this week, I hope this is helpful to anyone out there trying to dive into programming and think they don’t have what it takes.

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