The FASTEST Way to become a Software Developer in 2021

fastest way to become a software developer 2021 edition this time we're going to focus on the even faster way to become a software developer this year in 2021. if you're new here i went from broke english teacher to making 150k at uber in sf and then leaving it all behind for my freedom becoming a remote freelance developer so here's how this video is going to work first we're going to talk about why would you want to become a software developer fast what's the rush well we all need income to survive and being able to profit from development simply allows you to do it as a full-time effort most of us just don't have the luxury to go full time on something before we're getting paid to do it second the real learning doesn't really start until you're doing real world projects and once you can start both doing this full time and doing real world projects well that's just gonna bring your learning to a much higher level and third let's just be honest here none of us have unlimited motivation and your chance of success of doing something consistently for three months is just much higher if you have to do something for a year straight or more especially when that means giving up your nights and weekends to learn and finally want to work at google i'll be the one to be honest with you regardless of what anyone tells you your chances of getting into google for your first job are almost zero but you can and should work your way up to that after getting some real world experience first so if being a remote software developer is your goal or if you want to start making money online in a reasonable amount of time with a reasonable amount of success then this is the video for you now i am not going to ask you to smash the like button or to subscribe i simply want to tell you that i just released freemote the remote developer bootcamp which takes you from zero to profitable freelance developer it's a bootcamp built from the bottom up in 2021 so that sounds potentially interesting just check out the link that's all okay now i know you're smart so you're thinking this guy's just trying to sell me something how can i trust his opinion but in fact the opposite is true my opinion is so strong i invested six months of my life into creating this and i'm still telling you how to do it for free in this video now we've got a lot to cover so let's get started okay this video is going to be in three parts first the problem why do most people fail and why does success actually take so long when it doesn't really have to second the solution how do you overcome these problems and what specifically do you focus on at a high level and third the approach what are the specific things you need to learn and where do you learn them to pull this off okay first let's talk about the problems that almost everyone runs into including myself i'll make this simple most likely you think you have to learn more than you actually do to get a job most people start by looking at a college cs degree and thinking okay i just need to learn all of this stuff somehow 20 different classes untold numbers of concepts and programming languages and all of this one after another before getting paid a dime for programming and i hate to say it but even if you learn all of this unless you're doing it full-time for four years you still won't know as much as a computer science major so trying to compete head to head is just a losing battle the good news is you don't need 90 of this to get your first job as a developer specifically if you focus on being a front-end and not a back-end developer by learning only what is critical to get your first job you can get employed and start getting paid to learn more so this basic approach is what coding bootcamps set out to solve many people me included see this as a magic bullet to get that first development job now boot camps are a step in the right direction to be sure but they come with their own set of issues first they pump out identical armies of developers thousands per year who are competing for the same pool of jobs second the cost one boot camp lambda school costs 30 000 to attend and that's for a fully remote program that you're taking online i don't think i need to say anything else third if you look at a bootcamp curriculum although more focused the scope is still just way too broad full stack web development two programming languages throw a couple frameworks in there a database why not if you're doing a part-time program it takes a full year to learn all this if you look at dropout rates they're quite high and even if you make it to the end spend the money spend the whole year your success rate is still quite low for these reasons i've been quite critical of coding bootcamps and this is also why my recommendation two years ago when i made my first fastest way to become a developer video was to focus on just a narrower slice of this curriculum just html css javascript and react this allowed you to achieve deeper mastery in this more narrow set of skills and also mean that you could get job writing faster with all that said this is still a good way to go if you want to go straight to getting a tech company job if that's your goal however there is in fact an even faster strategy to becoming a developer which is beneficial even if let's say your end goal is to work at google to explain let me draw you a diagram here we're going to talk about the difficulty or barrier to entry for getting different jobs in the software industry first let's say the google barrier entry is here sky high the highest and for many getting into google is the holy grail just getting an interview let alone passing it is extremely challenging and the only people i know of who got this for their first job have technical degrees from highly prestigious universities the next most challenging let's say is a full stack developer job which boot camps say they teach you and they certainly try to but as we can see the scope of this is just too broad it takes too long and because you're not getting that real world experience you lose it before you can really use it this also means there's a lot of competition for computer science majors for these jobs realistically boot camp grads are going for the next lower barrier which is web dev slash front-end jobs which are here but this barrier is going up every year due to the huge amount of competition of people learning that same stack and trust me i coded on hiring software at uber all the bootcamp grad resumes look the same and we get an absolute ton of them anyway the point is if you're trying to study to go straight to here or here good luck it's going to take you a long time if you can get there at all even web dev is going to take you quite some time with that most focused react approach probably taking you around four months to get nailed down but let me ask you this what if there was an even lower barrier that you could start with and then work your way up and what if that lowest barrier even had the same pay as all the other ones it's true there is another type of developer you can become first and that's called a platform developer regardless of whether your goal is to work your way through these stages or plan your flag and build an empire as a platform developer this if i was starting over is where i would start okay the solution let's learn more hear me out and even if you don't follow this strategy i'm sure you're gonna learn a few interesting insights okay effectively what is a platform developer basically it's web development plus a niche which sounds like more than web development but you're actually going for a narrower slice which has a lot of benefits for you as a beginner developer anyway to give an example of this you'd have to learn html css and javascript plus a platform that platform could be wordpress it could be salesforce it could be an ecommerce platform the reason this is the best for developers starting out is because the platform takes care of a lot of complexity for you on the backend there is a content management system that is intuitive and easy to use and on the front end there's going to be templates which you can get work modifying rather than building from scratch so for you as a beginner it's much more streamlined and accessible now even though flexible these platforms do have limitations and that's good news because they require customizations integrations and extensions in other words code so you might think this development is straightforward it's not that complex so the pay must be lower and it's actually not and the reason is because there's so much demand for this development and because of the type of people who are demanding it people using these platforms are usually two things busy and not technical so as long as you have more technical knowledge than they do or if you can save them time then you can offer them a valuable service now since wordpress and platforms like shopify are quite user friendly that means the total amount of people using them is much higher as opposed to let's say people building software as a service apps using react and every person who builds with one of these platforms is potentially going to need development work from you so effectively you can start with bite-sized tasks at your skill level really simple things just out of the person who needs its reach and that'll help you build up your confidence start learning and earning at the same time and you can even start doing this while you still have a job or are in school anyway you can get going with this and only take on jobs that you're comfortable with at first meaning much less friction and much less imposter syndrome doesn't sound too bad right okay now let's walk through the details of this strategy first what you'll need to become any kind of web or front-end developer is a basic front-end stack that is html css and javascript now the good news is this info is quite available online you can get it a number of different places for free and it's really high quality udemy and pick up a great course by colt steel or steven grider and the only problem with these resources is they cover so much in so much detail it's actually hard to finish them they are intentionally broad because they want to hit the widest audience possible and in fact web development itself is quite broad with how fast it changes all the libraries frameworks and tools so just be careful you don't get in over your head trying to take too many courses here so in terms of learning just watching is not enough you can't be passive about this in fact as soon as you learn something new you should be implementing it or coding it yourself a good course should give you practice and quizzes but many don't but it's absolutely critical that you do this this is particularly important when you get to javascript and as soon as you know the basic syntax you should start doing practice problems on a site like code wars now once you have html css and javascript down you're going to want to build some practice projects and with every project you do try to step up the ambition and the quality this is a step where many people fail because they go straight from watching someone to build a project to trying to do one of their own from scratch and that is very challenging to do so again if you can find a course that gives you training wheels projects that is giving you a similar project first and then a prompt or does parts of it for you and then makes you do the other parts yourself that's really what you want to find frankly this was one thing that coding bootcamps did very well but i see it a lot less frequently and less expensive courses anyway cloning popular websites or landing pages will always be a good way to get practice just build your own version from the ground up try to figure out how to build each section and that's a good way to move forward the bottom line for web development is this the most important part is not what course you take or rather how you leverage what you learn okay with basic web development down step two is choosing a platform you want to be a developer for so how exactly do you choose we already talked about a few wordpress ecommerce salesforce and blogs like ghost and let's go through these one by one and then i'll give you my recommendation first we've got blog platforms which are often run by individuals and unless the blog is really popular they probably won't have much cash to throw around and usually once they have the blog the way they want it they won't want to tweak it too much next up let's talk wordpress which is a really broad platform that's used to build all kinds of different websites in fact much of the internet is built on it so there's a ton of work to be found with wordpress jobs but your coding skills do have to be quite good because things can get a bit complex with all the plugins and you're probably gonna have to learn some php too let's talk about crm platforms specifically salesforce which i would say is quite a good choice but unfortunately salesforce is used by mostly larger companies so there's going to be a lower overall volume jobs that said one major advantage it has is you're going to be working with businesses rather than individuals and last up we have e-commerce which in my view is the best choice and this could be woocommerce big commerce magento which are just back-end platforms or shopify which has front-end and back-end there's still a lot of development work to be done i put e-commerce development far above the rest for a few reasons first the growth of e-commerce right now is absolutely insane second these are businesses not individuals and profitable stores have a ton of cash to throw around but unlike salesforce everyone and their mom is using something like shopify to sell online meaning there's a much broader scope of potential clients for you and finally people are constantly customizing and tweaking their stores meaning they're gonna need in many cases ongoing development work or support okay now for part three you've chosen your platform how do you actually master it well here you want to do mostly the same as part one where you go to skillshare udemy as well as tutorials the platform themselves built and take in these resources as if you were going to be the one using this platform for real effectively in this stage you want to become a pro level user who knows all the ins and outs but instead of doing it for yourself you're gonna be doing that for other people you should be building real practice projects here so real e-commerce stores blogs or wordpress sites depending on what you chose and one thing that helps to take this seriously is to put your projects in a real portfolio with the full intent of showing these to future clients in any case once you've built several projects and read up on best practices believe it or not you can now offer consulting support to help people get set up and solve problems on the platform now granted you won't feel like or be a pro at this stage but you'll know enough to help someone out who didn't take the time to formally learn this stuff and that's all you need at first i know you don't believe this is possible but consider this you spend the time learning this but many other people just don't have time they have businesses to run or they just don't want to they might have complex specifications a large number of pages products or blog posts and therefore they need support to confidently do it right and finally while you're tech savvy don't underestimate how many people are technologically illiterate meaning they just suck with computers and could never figure this out on their own what's obvious for you might not be obvious for other people okay we're getting there stage four is to learn platform development you have all the pieces so this is the glue to bring it all together you want to learn specifically how development works on your platform and you'll want to get familiar with common tasks and services that people need knowing when to do development is just important as knowing how meaning you can decide when installing an app or a plugin might actually be a better option what you have to learn here is highly platform specific so i won't get too far into it but just to give an example on shopify you have to learn the liquid templating language as well as theme kit which helps you do development for shopify themes how themes themselves work and how you're going to want to do a development workflow learning how to do all this in one place is slightly hard so another little plug for fremo boot camp here we actually teach you all this stuff in a structured way okay finally we're on stage five which is getting paid for your knowledge at this point instead of grinding to pass the technical interview by sending hundreds of apps you can start bidding on real world jobs or finding direct clients right away the best part is you can start finding tasks that are very simple or rather at a beginner skill level simple things like changing styles or adding little widgets which even as a beginner would be easy for you but impossible for someone who can't code at all of course these are going to pay less but they will pay and most importantly you're building up real world experience and a portfolio overall your time to first dollar with this approach could be one to two months whereas the next lowest strategy that is the web development strategy is going to take you three to six months all in and like i said your learning accelerates when you get real-world projects so even if your goal is to get that 400k at google with the respect of all your friends this would still be a step on your way there and in fact it would probably get you faster than studying directly for that let me also say that even if you stayed at platform developer for your whole career that is a perfectly viable way to do it in fact some people are even charging up to 250 an hour for e-commerce development and you can do the math on how much that is per year anyway if i was starting over today from scratch this is 100 the strategy i would do and the steps we just went through [Music] well that's exactly how i would do it so if you want to do it on your own for free all the information is here in this video you actually have everything you need but if you do want more structure all the resources in one place a community and two dedicated technical mentors well that's the main reason why i teamed up with yon a dedicated e-commerce developer with three years of experience to create free mode the remote developer bootcamp we cover the a to z of web in e-commerce development as well as how to get your first dollar freelancing and you'll also be in a community of remote developers from around the world forgive me for the self-promotion but i've been working my ass off on this for six months and dumping everything i know into it link down below just check it out anyway regardless of whether you go for this strategy i hope i've helped you be more realistic and think about your learning in a strategic way let me know if you like longer videos packed with info like this and at this point i will ask you to subscribe if you made it to the end because i'll have a lot more real world developer strategies for 2021 because i don't just teach this stuff i also do it but that said it's time to get serious this year let's make some more money live anywhere and have more fulfilling work now's the time enough excuses alright i'll see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: Aaron Jack

Views: 258,919

Keywords: programming, web development, javascript, react, learn programming, learn to code, coding, software development, become a software developer, software developer, freelancing, freelance developer, coding tutorials, software, developer, fastest

Id: 4MkPTWZGkm0

Length: 16min 17sec (977 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 11 2021