A self taught programmer has a lot in common with a self taught guitar player. I don’t know if you’ve ever played guitar, so I’ll explain how a self-taught guitar player might learn guitar.
Now, when a young guitar player is motivated to learn a particular song, they will watch videos, print out tab sheets, the chords, and so on and they will sit and try and recreate the song themselves based on the videos and tabs available to them.
After hours of practice, going over the chords, solos, picking patters, and so on, they’ll be able to play their own version of that song. It won’t be quite the same, but it will be close enough for rock n roll.
Then, they’ll pick up another song they like and another song they like. Along the way, they will learn patterns, techniques, and so on without even realizing what they are. They will just figure out how to do them without learning the names and theories.
This all happens after thousands of hours of accumulated practice. Even at hours of practice a day, it takes years.
Well, the thing that really makes a self taught programmer is that they build things. Lots of things. To become a great programmer with very marketable skills, you have to build things and write code.
It’s not that they don’t know their stuff, but rather that the skill of being a professor is research and theoretical understanding, not building code and delivering value to a client.
Solve a problem that you want to solve. Build some software that does a cool thing you want software to do or someone else wants software to do. Write code for that every single day. Nights, weekends, every day. Even if you only spend 15 minutes, fine.
More importantly, you’ll be able to clearly demonstrate that you can write code, solve problems, and ship something to the world. That is valuable. That is the kind of thing companies are looking for.
Once you land a job, keep building in your spare time and promoting your work. You’ll rise faster than your peers because they go home and watch TV and aren’t learning or growing or building ANYTHING. They get the paycheck and go home.
The more you build, the more you learn. The more you learn the more valuable you are. The more valuable you are, the easier it is to get a job, the more you get paid, and so on.
So, go out there and build something. Write the code!
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NAME: How-do-self-taught-developers-actually-get-jobs
DESCRIPTION: [SUMMARY] How do self-taught developers actually get jobs - ] by
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