Forem: { marcio }

I'm stuck instead of moving forward. Now what?

{ marcio } — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 19:05:48 +0000

After 6 months of learning, I’ve started to feel like I’ve plateaued in my learning journey. In the beginning, even though everything seemed complicated as I was starting out, the pace at which I was learning new concepts seemed really fast. I was fairly quick at picking up concepts like HTML’s label elements or the fact that CSS is what you work on to improve on the design of your webpage. JavaScript was a bit tougher but it wasn’t too hard to pick up on simple ideas like what an array is or what a function does.
The problem came about after going through the “easy” part. When you reach the end of the simpler coding foundations, you’re exposed to more complex topics and ideas, and that’s when you might feel like you’re in this no-man’s land where, on one hand you already grasp the basic concepts, but on the other you’re aware of how much you still have to learn.

The list goes on and on

I’ve had to ponder on this feeling for a couple of days to deflect my inner saboteur’s attempts at making me feel insecure (once again) about my ability as a programmer. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I have to be kinder to myself and stop comparing my skills and knowledge to others.
When I first started on the path of web development, I thought it would be easier and faster to learn than Swift, but I was really wrong. Beyond the basics of HTML and CSS, you have to learn JavaScript which, by itself, is a fairly complicated programming language.
But the rabbit hole goes much deeper than this.
After mastering these three aspects of the front-end development you still have several frameworks like React, Vue or Angular you could take on. Then, you could also consider one of the many static site generators, like Gatsby, Next or Eleventy, just to name a few. And this doesn’t even cover the back-end aspect of web development where you can learn about Node, ExpressJS, Java, C++, Ruby…
So why should I think less of myself just because I’m not where I wanted to be or know as much as I think I should know?

How to deal with this anxiety

One thing I’ve learned and which helped me manage the anxiety caused by this deluge of information is to tackle it a bit at a time. You see, no one will ever learn everything there is to learn, let alone in six months. What you (and I) have to do is learn our concepts first, pace ourselves to really understand them, and then jump into something else.
For example, when I was taking my full-stack course on Udemy I had this sense of urgency in me that made me almost rush through it. It was like there was some kind of expiration date on my head and if I didn’t learn all those concepts quickly enough, I would be out of some future, hypothetical job. As a consequence, when I started the React module, I wasn’t sure of anything because I hadn’t deepened my knowledge of JavaScript yet. And as React is basically JavaScript… You get the picture.

Next steps

To deal with this “learning plateau” I’m in, my plan is to basically continue studying JavaScript and really dig into it. After that, I’ll start learning whatever piques my interest – another thing I’m trying to do is learn what I really like and not whatever is hot right now.
There’s really no magic bullet to get you to your final destination – at least that I know of. The only advice I can give you (and myself) is to work on improving your knowledge and, hopefully, someday the plateau will be behind us.

Learning how to code after 40: is it possible?

{ marcio } — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 16:15:56 +0000

I can’t believe it’s been almost a full year since I decided to change some things in my life, namely starting to learn how to code. I learned a lot during these months, mainly that it’s very possible to learn new things after 40. The knowledge I’ve gathered recently made me remember something I’d apparently forget: I can do whatever I set my mind to. And you can too.
This is my journey.

Coding from the coziness of a blanket

It all began around last December. I was in a hump, bored to death, thinking my life wasn’t going as I had expected. Then my partner said to me “why don’t you go on Udemy and buy a course to learn something new?” They were having a sale so I thought to myself “why not?”
I remember always wanting to learn how to code since an early age. It all began with Basic and Spectrum, but back then I thought that only special people with special powers could learn how to program. It seemed too hard, foreign and unobtainable, and so I never really pursued it.
Until I bought a Swift course on Udemy.

And so it begins

I started taking the course. After a couple of days, I had made my first iOS app – a clone of a Get Rich app, like the infamous one that many years ago scammed many people out of their money. Although it was a simple, useless app, it made me feel proud of myself, like I could do anything. The sky was the limit and I will never forget how happy I was with myself.
After a couple of months of learning Swift I decided to change gears and focus on the Web. Back in February, I thought I could quickly learn how to build a website first and then dedicate myself to code apps for the iPhone – looking back, I now realize I was being too optimistic about the number of programming languages one can learn in a single year - but hey, this is a lifetime journey and I now know I have many years to learn as many programming languages as I want to!
Back to what I was saying.
So I changed gears and decided to focus on web development first, mainly because I thought it would be simpler and easier to start getting customers for my apps this way – after all, every business needs an online presence, right?
I quickly realized there was a bunch of stuff I would have to learn, much more than I thought at first. Between HTML, CSS and JavaScript – not to mention Node, ExpressJS and React – there was a ton of knowledge to be had. This made me rethink my ability to learn and my imposter syndrome reared its ugly head. I started to think I had been too foolish, that at my age I wasn’t going to be able to learn anything because it was too hard.
I had started to compare myself to other online, a trap I failed to notice.
When something like imposter syndrome want to take a hold of you, it helps having someone in your life that pulls you back from the deep end of the well to remind you of how much you’ve learned. And that’s exactly what my partner did.

Now what?

In just five months I’m happy to say I’ve learned enough to make my own website. I’ve also finished a website for a 3D artist and I’m currently working on one for a friend of mine, whose online presence was in need of a helping hand.
I still have much to learn, but so does so many people. I look at it this way: learning how to code an app or how to build a website is a marathon, not a sprint.
And if in five months I’m here, who knows where I’ll be in another five or 12 months? Hopefully, at least I'll be more knowledgeable.