seems like a good gig, imo.
I’m working on getting out of being a headhunter (a decent, honest, technically minded one who actually listens, but still with all the bad actors it’s hard to have prod in my career) into software development. I’ve always been fascinated with computers ever since programming my BBC micro first in basic then assembly.
Family reasons meant i needed a short term job (12 years ago!) so I put off learning and dropped out of university.
I’m able to spend the evenings and weekends learning now -I’m fascinated by iOS development, Swift and learning all the apis.
Motivation hasn’t been too hard to find but seeing light at the end of the tunnel has and this post resonated with me because I understood a lot of it and thought that I have come a little way after all.
Thanks for taking the time to write this.
You don't work in software. Yet.
Good luck with learning! Find fun problems to work on, like making games or programming your lights. Perhaps scraping web pages for content and emailing you. Automate some small things. If you keep having fun, you'll stay motivated.
The more you build, the better you'll get. It just happens naturally. You'll think, "I could have done this better by doing X instead", or, "I could have organized this more efficiently".
Before you know it you'll be ready to make a career jump (if you want to). A lot of people in our industry never went to university and studied on their own.
A few recommendations:
Learn lists (aka vectors, arrays) and dicts (aka hashmaps, maps, etc.) These are the core data structures in scripting languages like Python. Knowing how to use them effectively with looping constructs is key to becoming a good programmer.
Next learn how to organize your code. Functions, classes, and files where appropriate. You'll learn this naturally as you continue to build things. You'll also learn by reading other code.
Use libraries to accomplish work that other people have conveniently made easy and packaged for reuse. Image processing, HTML scraping, game engines, website frameworks, etc.
When you graduate this and want to become more "academic", you'll want to look into two areas especially :
- data structures, which are things like arrays, linked lists, hashsets, etc.
- algorithm analysis, which will teach you how to write efficient code (big-O notation and analysis, etc.)
You don't necessarily need these, but they're a huge leg up. Mastering them can get you into FAANG.
If you like web stuff and servers, look at distributed computing. Also look at principles of operating systems to understand how threading, virtual memory, etc. etc. work.
Hopefully this helps. It's not stuff you need to jump on right away, but it can be a roadmap for the next few years.
Best of luck! Hope you enjoy everything you're doing and never feel discouraged. There are always people out there that are better than you, and it doesn't mean you aren't good yourself. Don't doubt what you're doing.
You got this.