Introduction

Community Careers, Journeys, and Stories
1

Hello all, my name is Chris (90’s kid :slight_smile: ) I’ve recently signed up for the full stack developer course after dabbling with scripts (LUA) for the last year. I’ve probably allowed too much time to pass by, but we’re never too old to learn right! I’ve learnt a little coding as the years have gone on, not so long ago I made a little creation on Roblox. However, I’m a realist when learning a new language and the challenges that game development require is too wide a variety of topic for one developer to achieve. Assets (Wide variety), sounds, video, themes, datasets, Lua, C## my main point is, I took a liking to coding/scripting and decided to strive for a career change. I like how HTML is easy enough to learn if enough effort is put into it, I also know that grasping the basics of CSS can simply make or break a website in terms of making a first impression.

I know it’s not going to be an easy task to learn HTML, CSS & Java and I’m under no assumptions that it would only take me a few months, I’ve aware that it’s a lifelong commitment and that I won’t know enough to make it a fruitful career until I’m at least two years in and have a good understanding of Java. (Dreading Java)

Goals

  1. For the first 6 weeks, I’m simply going to make several skeleton sites using 95% HTML and very little CSS makeup. (Just enough to showcase my HTML code is correct.)

  2. For the following - 8 weeks, I’m going to learn CSS, applying it to the skeleton sites I’ll have prepped by then. I’ve given myself a further two weeks in step two to have HTML refresher sessions.

  3. Java (oh no) I love the idea of Java and what it can do overall, but even the code looks scary. This will no doubt be a long winded task of 12+ months. Factoring in HTML and CSS refreshers.

It would be interesting to hear some success stories from people who were once me starting out?

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Yep, I got back into the mix in 2020. Only slightly older than you and hadn’t done math since the early aughts. Working now as a software engineer and enjoying it. Caveat is that I went back to school to do CS to build some fundamentals.

I guess some early advice is not to get too bogged down by what stack you’re using. Fundamental concepts are always bigger (software design patterns, system design patterns, networking, operating systems, algorithms, etc.). The fundamentals are language agnostic and make a lot of things easier in the long run. Also another thing I didn’t appreciate at first is installing things is a craft too, and that’s a good skill to have in general (meaning good enough command line skills for that sort of thing).

And most of all enjoy it. It’s not worth it if you don’t. Find some angle you like in it.

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