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My Journey as a Self-Taught Software Engineer - Duration: 11:22.
I was not interested in computers when I was growing up.
It's a lot of …
[music interlude]
Hi my name is Lynda, and welcome to this video. I'm going to be talking about, what the
title is. My journey as a self-taught software engineer.
Context: I currently work as a backend software engineer and it's been quite some time so
I thought it would be interesting to share my journey with you.
A little bit of a disclaimer. I did study Computer science with Statistics.
So, I have a CS degree. And, if you're wondering how I'm self-taught when I have a CS degree,
it's part of the video. Let's dive right into it.
[Voice] Were you interested in computers growing up?
No, I was not interested in computers when I was growing up. Because like, I didn't
have access to computers. there was just, nothing. I didn't even have access to games.
I didn't have games, I didn't play games while growing up and there was really just
no digital stimuli for me. I loved writing, I loved storytelling, which is kind of what
I am doing now I guess. But yeah, I was really just removed from the digital world. the extent
of my knowledge about computers when I was a growing up and when I was a kid was that
well, they exist.
[Voice] What was your motivation for learning to code?
My motivation for learning to code was different things and it was like a gradual progression.
And I'll explain. I began to study Computer Science as I mentioned earlier and there was
no big deal behind the decision. My mum thought it was a good idea and I agreed with her and
I was like, okay, maybe this is going to be interesting to learn. Now, as part of my course,
we had programming as part of the curriculum and erm, the way that they worked was that
you basically had to study on your own. [pause] as far as I remember, it wasn't possible
to learn programming from the classes. for many reasons, my own experience was that I
had to go back home with the programming text book that I had or with my computer which
I had at that point, and, try to figure out things.
Essentially, what I am saying is that for the first few programming languages that I
learned, they were motivated by passing courses, because I wanted to have good grades,
which is why I always insist that I am one hundred percent self-taught, because I am!
[Voice] What were your first programming languages?
Well, so, since I was studying, they were
basically the ones that we did in school first, so there was Qbasic and there was Assembly
language, then there was C++ and there was Java. At the point where we started doing
C++ was when my interest in programming really was sparked. But still in relation to passing
my courses. At that point I didn't have more than a passing interest. Then we started
to do Java. And Java was the first programming language that I fell in love with. I had this
book on Java that I got from someone. It was like a soft copy of a Java book and I was
determined that I was going to go through this book from start to finish. Because I
was like I am going to learn Java and I am going to build wonderful things with it.
[Voice] When did your Career begin?
I would say my career really began when I
discovered the web. Here's how it happened
So I am in this period where I am learning Java and I'm really obsessed with Java I'm
sleeping and dreaming code I'm writing code in my dream. that was like, the height of
that phase [giggle] And I saw this website that somebody built
I remember thinking, you can do that with code?
I was blown away and it was the interface that got to me. I just wanted to be able to
do something that beautiful. It was like boom! light bulb. this is what I want to do. this
is what I want to do with my life. I really want to emphasize the fact that I was really
drawn in by the interface, like the way it looked, and that's when my career really began.
After discovering that I wanted to do web stuff, I started learning how to develop for
the web. now, I was still in school at this point and I had to take out time to focus
on learning web development. and when I first began web development, And when I first began
web development, I started with bucky's tutorials on erm, HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP
and I kind of learned Full stack at the time when I was learning because I really was focused
on creating things. I wasn't really focused on learning programming for the sake of learning
how to program. I was just thinking about the fact that I wanted to be able to I wanted
to get to the point where I could make a working beautiful website. that's what I wanted.
It was kind of like relatively easy for me to start doing stuff that motivated me to
continue even more. so I mentioned my motivation for learning to code before now which is to
pass my courses, but my motivation for starting web development was the desire to create things
[Voice] So what did you do next?
Well, I started practicing. I kind of knew
that to get to where I wanted which is to be able to get a job after school I needed
to practice so I started doing lots of practice projects on my computer…I started erm, learning
even more, getting more books, getting more videos and just learning and learning and
practicing and practicing so it was kind of like this approach where I wanted to do something
and well, I had to learn how to do the thing. There was a lot of practice. I was tormenting
my friends with my practice projects and trying to get them to look at it and that's pretty
much what I did.
[Voice] what was getting your first job like?
Before I got my first job, I had of course been learning for a while and I had been practicing
for a while and I considered myself someone who could code and I could. But there was
also tons of things I didn't know. As part of the requirements for applying to
my first job, I had to do this task and it required me to use Git it required me to set
up stuff on my machine, it required me to use External APIs in ways that I hadn't
used them before then and it was like whoa, there's so many things to learn [giggle]
But thankfully, I was used to having to learn things to make them work and I had just so
much confidence about the fact that I would be able to figure things out eventually and
I did get the job so yeah but iiiiit was quite a trip yeah
[Voice] What other programming languages have you learned?
Other programming languages I've learned since then include, Python, Objective-C for iOS
and Swift for iOS too. I've worked with some Javascript frameworks like Node.js Angular,
little bit of React and I've done more and more web development with PHP. I don't do
a lot of frontend. I've kind of gravitated towards the backend.
[Voice] What is being self taught really like? Being self taught is a lot of practice and
learning. that's the way that I can describe it best. I just practiced my head off
[smiling] and I learned and I learned and practiced, like, actively.
In many of the cases, I wasn't practicing towards anything, I was just practicing because
I knew I wanted to get better I wanted to be great at programming and that was like
something that pushed me through my practice. It's also a lot of [deep breath] confusion,
its a lot of… it's something that requires a lot of will power in general because I mean
if you do not have motivation like if something specific isn't motivating you, you also
have to power through the erm ups and downs of learning to program on your own and just
having difficulties and having to figure it out and having to know that no matter how
difficult this thing seems, I can figure it out
Being self taught built my confidence when it comes to learning things, right now I there's
nothing I don't believe I could learn. I don't ever feel like this is such a complicated
concept or something I can't learn. I've learned over time that when I have a problem
in front of me that I do not know how to solve then I just have to hack away until I come
to the solution. and that's how I approach things and I I really give credit to being
self taught. erm, in terms of helping me think this way.
Another thing about being self taught is you can kind of, figure out your own path towards
learning, you can figure out what works for you best, that's one of the things I actually
like about being self taught. I also think erm just the fact that you make a lot of mistakes...
and just a lot of avoidable mistakes means that you get to learn so much more.
[Voice] How have you stayed up to date with trends in software?
Just in general, if you write software, there's going to be a lot of things to stay up to
date with. and the trends move faster than you can possibly move.
When I was first learning how to code, I kind of started out at a worse off place because
I was learning with outdated material. I know that now, in retrospect, but I didn't know
that then because I was basically just this person that was coding on her own, you know,
I didn't really know anything.
but even now that I'm aware of trends and I'm aware of how things move, it can be
very challenging to stay up to date with trends and especially when you are self taught. In
my case, it was because like there was no person or there was no teacher that actually
knew more than me and that would tell me this is how you do things now, or these are the
latest technologies for achieving this thing that you want to achieve. staying up to date
with trends is very active effort. Like, it's not something that happens organically and
so I have had to be very intentional about learning things and finding out what's in.
It's obviously not everything that I have the bandwidth [short giggle] to stay up to
date with. I very much believe in depth and I think that
the way that I learn best and the way that I function best if when I stay up to date
with just certain things. certain things that are relevant to what I do and so this makes
it easier for me I feel to stay up to date with trends. I think it is really important
to prioritize and also be very active. this is how it has been for me.
[Voice] Would you recommend being self-taught?
The answer is yes. But I think that if the
path that you prefer to follow or that you have like your only choice, is to be self-taught
I think that's completely fine. If you have means to get some kind of training that involves
people that can guide you through software, it might be a little easier like and save time.
It might also cost you money.but yeah.
There are two resources that I always recommend to people who want to be self taught software
engineers or who want to learn to code, they are free code camp which is at freecodecamp.org
or udacity at udacity.com and I think they're awesome. Of course there are tons of resources
on the internet but like these two are great, and there's probably other great ones too,
just talking about the ones I have experience with.
I just wanted to take about one last thing. Where my career is and plans for the future.
Now It's been about six years since I started learning how to code for the web. and it's
been four years since I started working since I got my first job and I am currently in my
third job so I think my career is going fine. I definitely want to learn a lot more things.
I want to write even more code. I already write a lot of code because I work as a software
engineer and I have to write code for a living but erm in general, I'm still very much
into writing code and still very much into software. I'm a backend engineer for now..
I mean that might change, I don't know, things change. the primary thing is that I
still write code and I'm still going to write a lot of code.
And it's a wrap! It's the end of the video! I'm really glad to have done this. Let me
know what you thought of my journey and let me know what you think of this video and if
you liked this video, give it a thumbs up, and leave a comment, I would love to hear
from you and I will see you in my next video, hopefully I am going to make a next video.
Bye!
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