
Ask HN: Help me become a coder - yolopukki
I have been lurking in HN for some time now and I respect the insight people share here. Would you spare a bit of advice that can help me make a few important decisions in my life at this time?<p>A bit about myself: I am European but will be moving to US in a few months, in the NYC area. I am young and with a fresh degree in Physics but I&#x27;ve always felt my call is for hacking in the space of computers. So I recently decided to become a coder instead.<p>My practical and current goal is to be &quot;employable&quot; ASAP, ideally in much less than one year.
I already covered some basics in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery and Python but my options are still pretty much wide open, frontend, backend.<p>Due to the limited time I really need to optimize this process and get the minimum set of skills in the shortest time that will make me employable.
So I ask you, if you would be me:
- what stacks&#x2F;technologies would you learn? Starting from the what is currently mostly in demand?
- how would you go about doing this learning as effective as possible? Best methods and resources.<p>This is ground breaking for me and all your insights will be gratefully appreciated.
If you prefer to write me directly - vasylmeister@gmail.com
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skylark
A lot of people are going to suggest either going back to school to get a CS
degree, or slowly building a portfolio while you teach yourself how to code.

I'm going to suggest a third option. If you have the money, you should attend
a high profile coding bootcamp. There's no doubt in my mind that it's the
fastest way to go from "intelligent non-programmer" to "salaried programmer."

Graduates from bootcamps have statistically excellent outcomes - the majority
of top bootcamps have 6 figure average starting salaries. Assuming you could
teach yourself everything in a hyper-accelerated fashion, your first job would
still likely not net you that much because the employer is taking a large risk
on you. A bootcamp serves as both a school and a vetting agency - I'm willing
to bet that attending a bootcamp will allow you to command 20-30k more than
the amount you would have earned teaching yourself.

In addition, after landing your job you'll still have time to do side projects
and continue learning whatever you'd like - it's not an either-or proposition.
The difference here is that you'll be making enough money to support yourself
and potentially save for further education.

I have multiple friends who have gone through coding bootcamps and it's been
an utterly lifechanging experience in every case. If you're smart and driven,
it almost seems like a no brainer.

~~~
dwhitworth1
+1 to coding bootcamp. I attended one and was employed within a month of
graduating. I think a CS degree is important, so I'm getting one as a part-
time student now, while employed full time as a developer.

Note, skylark said "high profile coding bootcamp." This is important! Properly
vet any schools you apply to. Chances are if the application and acceptance
process is trivial, the bootcamp may not be "hard" enough, if that makes any
sense.

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chrishall78
I would use online resources to keep learning and create some side projects
since it sounds like you don't have much job experience yet. Contributing to
open source projects or being active on sites like Stack Overflow will help
you learn too. You may think that you can't really teach with little
experience, but even if you're 3-6 months in you have things to teach to
beginners. Paid sites like Treehouse, Codecademy and the like will be higher
quality and let you focus more than free online tutorials, but it's certainly
not required.

I wouldn't focus on only what is in demand right now, take a longer view for
your career. It's the thinking and planning behind programming that is really
valuable, not whatever programming language is popular at the moment. Those
problem solving skills will pay off in the long run more than being an expert
in say, Javascript. Ask why and what you are building, not just how to do it.

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mad_dev
In addition to the latter, make use of your Physics degree in your projects.
You should also note the differences between high and low level languages and
make an adequate choice that fits your goal. I would also recommend that you
make use of open source not only as a license and a mindset, but to read
other's code and learn how they did whatever was achieved.

And Chris is right, it's how you solve the problem, how you optimise
performance...how you create. It doesn't matter if it's in Assembly, C, or GO.

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apache8080
I think your best way of learning to program as fast as possible is to start
working on side projects. These projects will help you learn all sorts of
technologies that will be applicable to a job. Another option is to work on
open source projects.

