The FASTEST way to become a software developer

what's up guys this is Aaron P tech today I'm gonna tell you the fastest way to become a web developer alright let's get right into it first of all I'm a software engineer in Silicon Valley I don't have any formal training in computer science from the time I started programming it took me about eight months to become a software engineer and I could have done it in half the time if I focused on the right things so how's this video gonna work I'm basically gonna break it into four parts first the problem why does it takes people so long to become a software developer and why do so many people give up before really getting into the interesting or exciting parts of coding part 2 is going to be the solution how do you overcome these really common obstacles that a lot of people run into and stick it out for the long run to finally getting a job part three is going to be the study plan what specifically do you learn what resources do you use to go from zero to developer in the fastest amount of time part four is going to be how do you actually find that job it kind of seems like a mystery how you could do this in such a short amount of time and overcoming the hurdle to getting interviews and passing them is definitely the most difficult part but you can do it if you follow a few steps alright part one the problem I see a lot of people online and who talk to me in person who say they're getting into coding I'm usually pretty stoked but then the next thing they say is yeah I'm learning JavaScript Python and a couple other things too right away I know they're gonna run into problems the thing is when you're polyamorous with programming languages technologies frameworks or whatever you're gonna become what's called a jack of all trades master of none this is the last thing you want when you're coding because it will take you a substantial amount of time to master one thing and it's way way way more important to be actually good at one thing then really bad at three four or five basically if you focus on more than one thing you're not gonna move anywhere because you're kind of being stretched in all these different directions another way to put this is people are going for horizontal proficiency and not vertical deep proficiency in one topic the other thing you have to keep in mind is this is actually really easy to do there's so much information about there about what the other thing to note is you can't actually blame these people because there's so much information out there that's telling you different things for example one article might say learning python is the best for a new developer but then you read another one saying the most jobs are with react so it's hard to know what's actually true but I'm here to tell you that if you focus on front-end development first specifically the framework react then you will be able to get a job fastest because on one hand there's the highest supply for these jobs and the lowest demand most people in college most people with computer science degrees probably know react but they will not know it much better than you if you study for a few months on the other hand if you try to study a back-end language like C C sharp any of the C languages or even Python chances are these people who have degrees have been doing this for four years in school this is the bulk of what computer science curriculums are they might have one class in front-end development but the majority of the classes are back-end and systems development and there's just no way you're gonna be able to compete with these people at least not at first all right part two the solution if there are so many things to focus on what do you actually invest your time in I'm here to tell you it's going to be react and reacts prerequisites HTML Javascript and CSS if you don't know what react is it's a JavaScript framework which basically means it is JavaScript but there's kind of another layer of abstraction on top of it that makes it easier to design the front end of webpages that's all you need to know for now you're gonna learn more as you get into it but just know that there's a little bit of JavaScript a little bit of CSS and a little bit of HTML involved in the react development workflow so like I said what you want to study is react and the key is to literally just ignore everything else even if you see an article or a YouTube video about Python just don't open it I'm telling you this is just gonna take away from your focus and what you want is laser focus on react to really really master these skills and get to a point where you can get a job really fast here's another key when you're learning you want to find content that's at your level not above or below it you if you're studying and you start to kind of feel bored and you're not getting into what's called a flow state that means the content might be at the wrong level and this puts you dangerously at risk of giving up you feel like you're not good enough to learn programming but the fact is you're just not comfortable with the prerequisite material to learn what you've decided to focus on at that particular time so if you notice this happening go back review what you've already learned perhaps consume it through a different medium if you learned it from a video try building a project with it if you've learned it from a project go watch YouTube or udemy another pro tip that will help you kind of stay focused is using the pomodoro technique which is allocating 25-minute blocks of time with five minute breaks in between a little add-on I used to help myself be more motivated for this technique is every day I would draw little tomatoes on a piece of paper for every 25-minute block I did by the end of I think it was about two or three months I had filled up a whole page of paper with tomatoes and that was my kind of goal to fill up the whole page and I basically had taped it to my desk this whole time and was just looking at it every time I said in my desk so I pretty often thought okay let me just get one more tomato and then it turned into two or three and when you're actually getting started you rationalize it like okay let me just do one and then we'll always end up being more so this is a huge tip so to sum that section up focus on react find content that's right for your level and adjust if not and use the Pomodoro Technique all right part three studying here is exactly what to study no BS I'm just gonna tell you right now first you got to learn HTML and CSS the building blocks of front-end development the way you do this is going code academy.com and what you get there is an interactive web course where it'll tell you how to do something and then you just type it directly in the browser and it's kind of this back-and-forth learning that you do you learn by doing let's put it that way after you finish the basic level on code academy jump over to a site called udemy udemy is a online learning platform which offers courses that are basically world class and you get them for around $12 there's 10 or more hours and most of these courses and what I would recommend is watching them on 1.5 times speed it's gonna take a while several days to get through each but if you think about if you think about the fact that you're actually switching careers it's not that bad I'm gonna ask you to buy around 4 so that's an investment of about $50 but you're gonna get by focusing on the right courses about as much value as you would in a coding bootcamp which is pretty crazy when you think about those being 20 grand if you're considering going to one of those I would not recommend it I did go to one and I made a video on that if you want to check it out on you to me you're gonna want to search for basic HTML and CSS and just choose the top-ranked course I think it has around 20,000 reviews that's almost five stars and you're gonna want to do that it's gonna be a lot of the same stuff but this will reinforce what you originally learned which as I said is kind of the foundation for the stuff we're gonna get into later with react alright now that we've got our basic HTML CSS down we're going to want to start getting into the JavaScript which is the real programming there are two really good JavaScript courses on udemy the first is called the complete JavaScript course 20:19 and the second one is JavaScript the weird parts keep in mind that the second one is a little more advanced so if you're not feeling ready for it at the end of JavaScript 2019 you can jump back over to code Academy and do their JavaScript track but I don't think you need to because the 2019 course is very complete once you've gotten those two under your belt and if you kind of are feeling comfortable with the weird parts of JavaScript you're more than ready to start getting into react there's two more courses on udemy that I would recommend for react all right the final two courses are two courses on react one is called modern react with Redux and the other is called react the complete guide there I think the top two courses on react if you search for react in you to me and these two are gonna be very similar but since this is what we're focusing on we want to drill the fundamentals of react into your brain I want you to build the projects along with the person in the course now they give you the code as a folder to basically download but don't do that type it out get the muscle memory started for typing react code and just go through it that way it is gonna take you a little bit longer but this will kind of mechanically ingrain writing react into your head so it'll start to feel more natural when you're typing it out also this kind of also typing it out helps us do the final thing in the studying stage which is editing these projects to make them your own a lot of web apps and this is no secret or basically very similar what you do is get data upload data and edit data and delete data it's called create read update delete crud which is the acronym used in web programming for basically most web apps online which follow this format so you're gonna build a few of these apps with you to me and things like the structure of where the files are and stuff that is very similar from project to project so the udemy courses will help you get that set up and then you can just edit the code within the structure when you are making your own projects so edit these projects a significant amount play around with everything see how things work break it fix it and tear it down and put it back together and this is really how you learn so once you've kind of messed around and made these projects your own you're going to want to build one project at least from scratch part four is getting the job which is the most important final step I'm gonna keep it simple there's a lot of things you need to do you need to update your resume to look software engineer ish that means kind of leveraging anything technical you've done in the past to paint a picture of who you want to be as a software engineer I kind of think of it like a tinder profile it's definitely you but it's the version of you that will get you a date the date is the interview basically so jazz it up once you've done that there's two ways to apply for jobs the first is cold applications which has a very low conversion but it's uneasy not easy it takes a long time but it's a very mechanical thing to do so what I would recommend is to do ten cold applications per day just blast them out use Pomodoro and just get them out it's gonna be very repetitive but you just have to do it I probably applied for a hundred jobs and got two interviews I was just pretty bad but keep in mind nothing technical on my resume except for writing kind of the languages at the top that I knew as well as my projects that's the other thing I forgot to mention you definitely want to put your projects prominently on your resume of which now you should have three or even four if you've done an action project two to become more comfortable with react the other way to apply for jobs is to go for connections or referrals which is a lot higher leverage in terms of how many hours you're putting in but it's also more difficult for some people because you actually at because you actually have to interact and message people that you might not know or might not know well where you start is basically go on LinkedIn and search for software engineers who have something in common with you that could be your college your high school a friend of a friend in my case I used to be an English teacher in Asia so I found other people who were former English teachers who transition to software engineers somehow which is very niche but the more niche and familiar you can get the more it'll work kind of in your favor in terms of getting a response so what you really want to do is start kind of dialogues and almost like just build relationships because you don't really know where they're gonna take you not everyone will agree to flat-out refer you but they might be able to connect you with someone whose company is hiring you you never know where the road will lead the so the other most important thing in this stage is to just not give up it's really easy to get discouraged and what I saw in the class my bootcamp class that I graduated with is there was a large group of people who either took some time off or basically tried for a few months and then just straight up gave up and you just can't do that it can take you four months to actually get the job I mean that's not what you want but it could happen and you just can't give up because eventually I'm telling you if you keep coding because you have to do to keep your skills sharp and keep applying it will happen for you you'll find the opportunity but a lot of it unfortunately comes down to luck especially when you're going for a beginner position so I know that might be a hard pillow a hard pill to swallow there at the end but that's just kind of the reality of the situation but if you do want it then you will get it that's the fact and the more you apply for the faster it'll happen so it's really up to you how quickly you want the job anyway that's the whole video the four parts main things to remember are focus on one thing by being monogamous follow the courses that I mentioned they're all really good and basically followed those two job strategies networking and applying those should be the big takeaways and also use the Pomodoro Technique anyway that's all I got today I hope to see you guys soon I will be making more videos and catch you later

Channel: Aaron Jack

Views: 614,269

Rating: 4.9487672 out of 5

Keywords: programming jobs, react, front end, web developer, software engineer, coding, udemy, learn programming, learn to code, coding jobs

Id: 4kgoEphreRc

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 18 2019