1 year of self-study. From 0 to Full Stack.

January 8, 2024

According to my Github, I started my learn-how-to-code journey on 19 January 2023. I am writing this post on 6 January 2024, and I plan to publish it before my first coding anniversary.

At that point in time I was still in Russia, working as something between paralegal and delivery boy. I had no money to save, no plans for life, but an increasing desire to leave the country. Without getting too political, I’ll just say that it was quickly becoming unsafe and unpleasant for me to stay there.

There were many reasons for me to start turning my life around, and at some point I did. When I decided to learn coding - no one, even me myself, believed that I will stick with it for longer than 2 weeks. I’ve had these kind of enlightments before, and I’ve never had even remotely finished the planed. Usually, after 8-hour shift on my twos, I’d spend the evening playing videogames or watching something online, but somehow I managed to change that in a short period of time.

From learning fundamentals to path choice

I started with Harvard’s “CS50 - Introduction to Computer Science”, a 10 week course, that gave me a lot of fundamental programming and CS skills, without overwhelming me with details. It was perfect for me at that time, because I had just enough energy after my dayjob to watch a 2 hour lecture, then the next day start doing the Problem Set. If I failed, I could finish it the day after that. It took me 3 months to complete it. Here’s a quick list of what I learnt: C programming language, Python, basic HTML, CSS, backend Python-based web-framework Flask, and SQL.

Then it was time for me to choose a certain path in software development and learn it from A to Z. I had a plan to leave my job by the end of summer and move out of the country, which was a tie-breaker for me in this choice. I went with Web-Development as it’s one of the easier ones from my understanding.

WebDev

As I was already immerged in CS50 and the community around it, I thought it was a good idea to go with another course from the same creators - CS50Web. It wasn’t.

The course delved in just a little bit deeper than the original one and focused on Python and a different backend web-framework called Django. Lectures felt too boring to watch, as I either already knew the things taught there or they seemed to be too specific and useless for me at that point in time. So at some point I decided to do just the “homework projects” instead, skipping lectures until there was something I couldn't do. I finished all of the projects in a few weeks and went on searching for a better course.

The best Web Development course on the internet

After being unsatisfied with the previous course, it was time to research thoroughly before starting one. I went through multiple Quora questions, reddit posts etc., and kept seeing this one course a lot of people were recommending.

The Odin Project, or TOP.

Now that course is something I could talk for hours about on its own. It’s a non-profit, open-source online course, that is mainly focused on giving you multiple sources to read from, instead of putting it all in one place to learn. When you are learning the smallest subject, you are going to go through videos, documentation, articles by multiple people that are already successful in the field. When you learn something on TOP - you REALLY learn it, with all the little details.

This one turned out to be harder to combine with the day-job than the previous ones, so I really started working hard on it only when I left the job and moved countries. The course teaches you most of the things you need to be a Full Stack Web Developer and there are a lot of success stories from people that finished it. Some of the things I learnt were:

Advanced HTML, CSS and JavaScript. This course really teaches you most of the things there is to know about them.
JavaScript frameworks and libraries: express.js, React and more
Non-relational databases, MongoDB
Coding tools: VScode, ESLint, Prettier, Linux command line and more
How to actually make your websites accessible on the internet by everyone.
How to make your website safe both on the frontend and the backend.
How to look for a job, how to act in an interview, what to prepare.

As I said, I can go on about this course forever, so I will stop right here.

Result of 1 year journey

I loved computers for most of my life, yet I didn’t actually know much about coding. But throughout this year I’ve learnt an incredible amount of stuff. I am currently in the process of job-hunting in the field, but I at least consider my learning as a beginner developer done. Of course, a developer job is going to be a life-long learning journey by itself, but that’s another story.

What I’m ending up with after a year is:

- My personal website-portfolio, showcasing my 4 most-polished projects.

- Over 20 projects on my github, that I trained my craft at.

- A few open-source contributions,