In 2012, I was stuck in a career I hated and had too much debt to go back to school. I had never written a line of code in my life, but decided to try programming. Fast-forward to 2014, I was a software engineer with six-figure job offers. In the years since then, many people have asked me for advice that essentially boils down to:

How do I get paid to learn how to code?

This question is the inspiration for Zero To Code, a book for those seeking the fastest path to professional software development. Zero To Code teaches you how to program through a series of real-life projects that help you build a strong GitHub profile to show potential employers. You can read more about the general approach here.

Zero To Code is getting close to done, and I’m ready to share it with the community. Here it is:

Zero to Code - Chapter Guide

A rough draft of the first 42 (short!) chapters is done. I have a handful more chapters to write.

If people are interested, I would be happy to post a few chapters a week to guide people through the journey (and also get feedback on the book! Study group, anyone?)

Thanks for checking it out!

Ever wake up feeling groggy, even though you thought you had enough sleep? It turns out that by timing your wake up time based on REM cycles, you can wake up more refreshed and more productive.

This got me thinking, why don't I put my front-end web development skills to the test and build a tool that will help people, especially coders who are known for working late at night know when they should go to bed depending on when they want to wake up?

So, I built a bedtime calculator with React JS, CSS, and some HTML for the landing page.

I would love anyone's feedback, and I think it's a useful tool because it will help anyone who uses it calculate when they should go to bed by choosing a time when they want to wake up.

Hi

I have created an excuse generator: https://codepen.io/AshkanAhmadi/pen/eYGydyQ?editors=0010

Any feedback?

Thanks

Hey Reddit, this is my first post ever. Seems like a cool community so I thought I'd share my story.

I started coding January 17, 2020, I’m now 101 days in.

An interesting side note: In the past 100 days, I have told no one what I was doing. My friends, family, girlfriend. No one knows that I'm learning to code. So you’re actually the first.

Learning To Code

I wanted to document, both quantitatively and qualitatively, what it’s like to learn coding. For anyone completely new to this, I hope it helps. To any vets, your feedback is incredibly valuable.

To begin, I started from actual zero. I didn’t know what a <div> was, a function, loop, the difference between front-end and back-end, and honestly I think I had never used a curly brace in my entire life.

I began reading blogs, detailing people’s personal journeys with coding. The most influential, for me, outlined how she became a developer in 1 year, making several original web apps along the way. She estimated her time spent learning to code (having documented every day she actually spent learning) around 300 hours.

When I actually committed to this Project, I oscillated between “how fast I can learn this”, and “how effectively I can learn this”, the latter was without a consideration of time (and not to be confused with how efficiently can I learn this). I created a plan, knowing well that things would change as I moved forward. In the time since starting I've more or less kept to the original concept while tweaking details along the way.

Base Level Plan

I determined with focused practice, 3 hours a day, every day for 100 days, I would reach the 300 goal in, more or less, three months. Getting to the bloggers (who I based much of this project around) proficiency. I reached that today. I still have quite a bit of work to do.

Second I determined FOCUS was probably the single most important variable. It seems that many people “work” or “study” for much longer hours (I believe much of which is hyperbole), and see diminishing progress.

An analogy that I like to use is, if you give a bodybuilder and a novice the same weight to work out with, will they achieve the same results (or more specifically will they achieve equal muscular stimulation?) The answer is obviously no. Rest time between sets, movement quality, heart-rate, range of motion, time spent in eccentric vs concentric are all variables in the gym. All to say that, how you use the tool (time, in this case) is equally, if not more, important than the tool itself. Reducing all of “learning to code” down to “time spent” simply wasn't a helpful metric alone.

So what did this mean?

• Study Sessions would be no longer than 1 hour. After which I would take between 5-15 minute break before starting the next session.

• All notifications would be turned off every device I owned. None of the tools I would use would even have the ability to distract me.

• Using a focus app (Forest for IOS) I would set a timer before I started a Session, and then leave my phone in the other room. This allowed me to track actually time “in-focus”

• No other tabs would be opened. If I had a question, I would simply jot it down, and move on. (This became painful later on when trying to diagnose errors, but led to more time trying to reason through and solve problems in my own code. i.e. a super important skill)

Focus Stopped

• If I saw that my hour was up, regardless of where I was in my lecture or in my code, I would stop.

• My focus broke. I would count this as any time my mind wandered in any way.

  • If I started thinking about problems at work.

  • What I was going to have for lunch.

  • If I was working in a coffee shop and started eavesdropping on someone else's conversation

  • If I started fiddling with things on my desk, or daydreaming of any kind.

  • If my focus extended beyond the 60 minutes (which happened on the rare occasion I truly lost track of time. Usually deep in a project) that time would count. Thus leading to the possibility of 90/60 minutes of focus or a 150% focus for that session.

  • Side Note: I used a screen time restriction on all social media to 8 minutes a day, across all devices. I can’t attribute this to better focus (since I didn’t also conduct this independently while having a limit of, say, 2 hours) but I think it definitely helped, at least my mental health.

The Three Phases

I split my learning into three distinct Phases.

Each Phase is 50 days long. Split into five, 10 days Sections.

• Phase 1- Learn

  • The learning Phase was all about figuring out “The right questions” to ask.

  • There was so much (and still is so much) about this world that I don’t know or understand. Learning the fundamental concepts was the first goal.

  • With that understanding I could begin to create a mental map of the road ahead, and more importantly find better tools to help me along my way.

  • There were some hiccups here, with direction.

  • For example, I started with CSS, then HTML, then moved to JS, then React. Realized I didn’t know enough JS to learn React so went back to JS. Learned some Node and Express, then back to React.

• Phase 2- Practice (Where I am now)

  • The goal of this Phase is to create as much as possible.

  • To make things, either through code alongs, prompted projects, and even personal projects and experiments.

  • One of the best tools for this was learning a new method, and then the next day (leaving a little time to forget) test myself by trying to build a small, invariably ugly little application using it.

  • Many of my apps are beyond hideous. Inelegant code, little to no styling, but every once and a while I’ll write something and just look at it thinking “Wow, that’s actually pretty badass”

• Phase 3- Build

  • This is all about building big, fully functional apps.

  • Working only projects that take weeks or even months to fully see realized. This is about trying to simulate, as close as possible what it’s like to actually be a developer.

Tracking

When I started, I didn’t even know what would be important to track. So things have grown, quite a bit, since day one. I spend about 3-5 minutes updating my spreadsheets before and after my hour-long Sessions. As well as 15 minutes at night writing a summary of everything I learned that day.

Here’s a link to Phase 1 and 2 Tracking as of today! There are accompanying Google Docs with notes, and summaries of what I learned everyday.

Phase 1 Notes

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1eMZ9JO5CA_kuagzTasagde46jVcUmJkipsnG9dKTWD0/edit?usp=sharing

Phase 1 Focus Tracking

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rh78qLXiL_MfllhI1OwbKKvvn0JXfH4avYP7TbACmcM/edit?usp=sharing

Phase 2 Comprehensive

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gN73DpRbQrBIPO4CAmNPcWBsE-9A8prEZWtOeY0-rUs/edit?usp=sharing

Tools

Before listing out the Tools I use, I really want to warn you if you're thinking about starting on this journey. It’s not about the specifics of the tools. It really isn’t, and it's hard not to get caught up in that. It’s about the application of the knowledge, thats where the real learning happens.

When you JUST start out, find an instructor online that you like, and make sure the course is up to date. Those two will get you 80% of the way there. Keep moving forward, momentum is your friend.

As you’ll see below, I like Colt Steele, his style is great BUT at this point I’ve realized I need to see other people write code. So in addition to learning new material during a course, I’ll search on YouTube for the same specific topic that he's teaching, and watch how other people implement that technology. There are so many ways to do the same thing. Now..... tools!

Tools

• Codecademy

  • I used the editors on here to complete HTML, CSS, JS and React.

  • This and FreeCodeCamp are where you start.

• FreeCodeCamp

  • What’s nice about them is the blogs that are featured on their site.

  • I also signed up for their newsletter which features some interesting articles and quick reads to expose you to more of this world.

• YouTube

  • Avoid at all costs, honestly.

  • Now obviously you’ll need to go here, but youtube is kinda like the slimy underbelly of learning to code. You go in for something that you need, but (quite literally by design) you’ll be enticed to stay, go off on tangents, and start thinking to yourself “Hmm I wonder what extensions he’s using on VS Code” or “Wow, I do need to know the top 7 tricks that ex-Facebooks used to get an interview”

  • Get it, get out. Other than that, there are a few good Youtubers, who have udemy courses. Which leads me to...

• The Web Developer BootCamp (Colt Steele Udemy)

  • Great, great, great introduction to full stack web development.

  • Slightly outdated. In all honesty I cut it short when it came to the backend because almost everything they were discussing and tools they were doing needed to be modified in some way.

  • At the time I wasn’t great at reading documentation, so I ended up spending more time trying to make code compatible, than actually progressing through the course.

• Modern JavaScript BootCamp(Colt Steele, Steven Gridder Udemy)

  • This was a doozy, directly after The Web Developer BootCamp. It rehashed alot of the same topics, but with new examples and updated JavaScript syntax which is nice.

• The Modern React BootCamp (Colt Steele, Udemy)

  • I’m still working on this now. So far, I would give it (and plan to) 5 stars.

In addition I just bought

• The MERN fullstack guide (Maximilian S., Udemy)

• CSS- The complete guide 2020 (Maximilian S., Udemy)

Beyond this, in my notes I list specific documentation I read on a daily basis, blogs, and specific YouTube videos.

Goals For Phase 3

Next as you can see I’ll be working on both deepening my understanding of backend development, as well as design and CSS. Kind of seem at odds right?

Goals

• Post more on Reddit, and get more involved in the community (timing is pretty awful, I know).

• Create projects and seek feedback from other developers.

• Have actual conversations with developers and in an attempt to uncover my blindspots, and to help tweak my trajectory.

• Publish on Github.

• Build something aesthetically pleasing (lol).

I hope this was helpful if you’re just starting out on your journey. If you have any questions for me, please feel free to reach out. I’d love to talk to someone about this, considering I haven’t in the past 100 days.

TLDR: Github Repo with 100+ Free resources to learn Full Stack Web Development

18 months ago I dove head first into Full Stack Web Development. I wouldn't have been able to get off the ground without the awesome help I've received from reddit. So, I wanted to give back a little. I'm a chronic note-taker, and anything that I have found useful, I've saved along the way. Yesterday, I started cleaning them up, and added them all to a github repo. I still have a ton of links to go through, but wanted to release this in case others wanted to add links as well.

My links focus on Javascript, React, and Node.js. It's a mix of reddit posts, articles, tutorials, classes, and courses. Everything is Free. There is also a wealth of information on interview prep and applying to jobs. This is all stuff you could find on the internet on your own, but hopefully this format will make it a little easier.

Whether you're just starting to learn, or you've been learning for a while, hopefully this is helpful! Thanks again for helping me out along the way as well!

Here are all of the topics that I have:

• Start Here

• How to learn

• What is the Most Useful CS Bookmark You have

• Free Full-Stack Programs & Classes

• Learn HTML

• Empty because I already knew HTML. Feel free to add links!

• Learn CSS

• Pretty empty, for the same reason as above.

• Learn Javascript

• Learn React.js

• Learn Node.js

• Learn APIs

• Learn Git

• Games & Challenge Websites

• Free Programming Books

• Open Source Contribution Opportunities

• Am I Ready to be a Developer?

• Software Developer Success Stories

• Resume's, Portfolio's, LinkedIn, Interview Prep, & Salary Information

The 7th edition just came out last month. He is so systematic about his explanations and terminology, and the way he builds the reader's understanding of Javascript from the ground up. Highly recommended reading. I understand the language so much better since I started reading this book.

Hi everyone,

I'm a full-stack software engineer with several years of experience in the field (main stack: Node / React / AWS). Throughout my career, I've received invaluable help and support from fellow engineers, and I believe it's important to pay it forward. That's why I'm offering free mentorship to anyone who may need it.

Some possible subjects we can cover during our 20-minute weekly calls include:

• How to transition into software engineering

• Strategies for career growth and development

• Technical challenges or problems you're facing

• General advice and feedback on your work

As your mentor, I can offer guidance and support based on my experience in the field. I'm passionate about helping others succeed in software engineering, and I believe mentorship can make a difference.

If you're interested in learning more or scheduling a call, please DM me so I can send you a calendly. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and helping you achieve your goals in software engineering!