Ask HN: Help me become a coder | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Help me become a coder

8 pointsyolopukki5 comments

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?

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've always felt my call is for hacking in the space of computers. So I recently decided to become a coder instead.

My practical and current goal is to be "employable" 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.

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/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.

This is ground breaking for me and all your insights will be gratefully appreciated. If you prefer to write me directly - vasylmeister@gmail.com

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.

+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.

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.

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.

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.

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