My Coding Journey: Part 2

 The Pivot

Sometimes you have your head down for a long time and you really need to come up for air. That's what I realized in April. I was on this fairly straightforward path of becoming a web developer (see the previous post) but I had committed to this path before I understood programming enough to consider a variety of options. I decided to take a short break and come up for air, smell the roses, and talk to people. I started talking to friends and friends-of-friends who are currently working in tech. I asked them how they got into tech and if they had any advice for a self-taught programmer. This was very helpful at this stage since I had been programming for a few months now and could actually understand a lot of the jargon my friends ended up throwing around. And this gave me some perspective.

The Perspective

Being able to talk to friends in the tech industry was super helpful and I also returned to YouTube for a few hours (not all at once). I had come to this realization while I had been learning web development--mostly HTML and CSS (and some Python, what a great language). That realization was that I love using code to manipulate user-facing applications. I love building things that I know other people will see and interact with. I also like needing to have a basic grasp of design as the whole field of design is super interesting to me. With this perspective now in hand, and some helpful conversations with friends, I narrowed down my options to four different paths.

The Four Options

Option 1 was switching from programming altogether and becoming a UX/UI designer. I enjoy design and recognized that this job is still tech-focused. 

Option 2 was to generalize a bit more and learn how to become more of a software developer. This would entail learning more languages and building mostly on my problem solving skills, among other things.

Option 3 was to stick with web development. I would really dig into JavaScript and then get good at a JavaScript framework or two. This was the path where I would just jump back into what I was doing and continue to build on it.

Option 4 was to make a smaller course correction and switch to mobile development. Specifically, I was only really considering iOS as I'm an iPhone user and a low-key Apple fanboy (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know).

The Decision (again)

My process went something like this. I ruled out UX/UI because I do enjoy the process of writing code and programming. Also, I would have to start from the bottom again and that was not appealing to me with my deadline on the horizon. Option 1 was a nope for me. 

Next I considered the possibility of picking up more languages and decided that software developing was so broad that I could end up in a job where I was not actually working on user-facing applications. I decided that possibility made that path fairly unappealing. Option 2, bye bye! 

Option 3 was really clearly a good option. I had been spending most of my time working on web development so this decision would mean that all my time up to this point was leading me directly to my goal of that tech job in January of 2022. However, iOS development won over web development simply because I started falling in love with the idea of making apps. A lot of people I talked to considered web and mobile development super similar and I should just pick the one I wanted. Well, the inner Apple fanboy won this one. iOS development, here I come!

What's Next

Now I've decided to become an iOS developer. I swapped out my Linux computer for a MacBook Pro. I've picked up Angela Yu's iOS Udemy Course and have made my first (read: very basic) iPhone app! I'm excited to be on this journey and hope you found my story thus far interesting! Please check in to follow along as I share my story and advice on how to become a developer yourself! After all, there's so much to learn inside of tech and programming, I really believe everyone in tech is a developing developer.

Tim David