The Key To Learn Software Development

Key Takeaways

One of the hardest things on your path to becoming a developer and learning to code is consistency. This is probably the number one thing people would say when learning code is it's about repetition. It's about doing it every day. It's about working at it again and again and again. And you know, if you don't take any breaks, you're going to get there much quicker than if you do take breaks. And so consistency is something that a lot of people struggle with in all aspects of their life. So I'm going to talk to you about five ways that when I was learning to be a self-taught dev, I I made sure that I was able to code every day. I was consistent with my my learning and that I was able to finally just get it, right? And just finally grab and understand oh my god, it's starting to click. These are the things that I made sure so that I had a consistent path. So the first thing is about getting rid of distractions, eliminating things. Often times you are trying to make a career change, you're trying to make a life change and learning code and all those things are it's a it's a big change and you need to sort of refactor some of your life to make to make it a change that will actually last. And so you need to start getting rid of distractions. That was that was really the first thing that I did and those were a couple different categories of distractions and you know, some of you may disagree and say you know, Dylan, I don't want to get rid of all the I'm it sounds like you're getting rid of all the fun, right? Well, you have to understand when you're when you're taking on you know, a career change or a life change, your your life and career are changing and you need to reflect that. So for me, I personally sold all my game systems. Like I always had issue where I I couldn't I say couldn't. I didn't have the self-control to have a game console in the house and not play it when I should be coding, when I should be going to a meet up, when I should be reading um a book about software. So, that's the first thing. And that's more than just, you know, physical items in the house. Uh if you watch a ton of TV, sell your TV. Uh sell your game systems. Um surround yourself with like-minded individuals as well, right? So, one thing that I had to do was I had to stop hanging out with my friends who were, you know, losers essentially. And uh losers in the sense that they, you know, they just want to go out, drink every night, and you know, they were okay going and working their, you know, minimum wage job in the morning. And that's If that's what you want to do, but to me, that's not those aren't the people who are going to help me become a better developer. So, surround yourself with people who are trying to who are developers, are trying to be better developers. And slowly, those distractions, whether they be friends, whether they be game consoles in my case, uh will slowly weave them out because you're going to be changing as a person. But you can in the in the short term, you can get rid of the stuff that you don't need uh that are just items relatively quickly. Number two is um pretty much setting a schedule. Setting a schedule. Um the uh the the thing here is it is very easy to say that you are going to, you know, work hard every day. But what does that mean? What does that really mean? And when you have a schedule, you are forcing yourself into a situation where no matter what, from the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m., I'm going to be doing an hour of something. From the hours of, you know, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. every night. I give those examples cuz those are the hours that I work um on my YouTube channel, on my courses, uh on becoming a better developer. And the same hours that I worked when I was learning to code, before I was a developer. Because, you know, most of us probably aren't self-employed, probably aren't uh independently wealthy. So, we have to find the time. And when you find the time, you know, so far we've eliminated the distractions, which in theory should create the time so that we can stick to our schedule. And it's hard to do, but it is one of the ways to stick with being consistent, to consistently work hard, and um you'll continue to make progress if you do that. Now, tip number three is having clearly defined milestones. Now, what does what does that really mean? In reality, what we're really talking about is having goals and knowing when you have accomplished those goals. Um it's very easy to have one goal, right? I want to be a developer, Dylan. That's my one and only goal. Okay, well, what are the goals you need to achieve to accomplish that goal, right? Um goal number one, set up a GitHub, right? All right, cool. I set up a GitHub. I have a new project. Cool, a little baby milestone, your first project on GitHub. Awesome. You have a LinkedIn. Cool, you've worked on your LinkedIn, you've got it out there. Oh, you built your personal portfolio site in React with in Angular, whatever it is, if you're a front-end dev, back-end dev, but you built some project. All these little goals and milestones. Understand what it is that you want to accomplish. If your end goal is to become a front-end developer, you need to have 10 mini goals on your path to getting there that include all the languages you need to be familiar with, the framework that you want to learn, the projects that you're building in that framework, etc. etc. etc. Not only will it give you a better idea in a learning path that you need to have. A lot of times it gets very overwhelming, especially in the the web dev world, because there's new stuff coming out. Oh, should I learn Vue? Should you know, Python, Django? What What What should I learn? Uh you can do your own research on that, but what you need to do is after you've done your research, after you've talked with your mentor, after you've, you know, watched videos, read blogs, you need to define that path on how to get to your end goal and those mini milestones you get there, not only will it keep you motivated because you'll see like, oh, I'm getting closer. Because you're either going zero to 100. If your only goal here is to be a dev, you're going to feel like you're at zero until you're 100 and that's very demotivating. So, you need to have those clearly um clearly defined goals. It also give you the confidence for when you are ready to start throwing out those job applications. When you are ready to start saying, you know what? I'm ready. Let's go interview, right? Let's go start submitting those resumes. Let's start doing those technical interviews, those those phone screens. So, those clearly defined goals are going to be what allow you to stay motivated and it it's a little it's nice. All right, I'm you know, I'm one step closer. So, that is something that I would think is a big deal that you need to have set up in in your learning path to stay consistent. All right, this may come as a little bit of a uh like, well, didn't you just say you need to get rid of those distracting friends? Well, yes. Uh but, you need to expose your process to other people so that they're on the same page. And that doesn't mean that I'm telling you to kick out your mother, kick out your brother from your life or anything like that or your kids cuz, you know, they take up your time and energy to a degree. Um but, for those people who you're like, you know, they're not a negative influence on me, but they do they are time, right? If you have kids, you need to watch them, you know, your husband or your wife, you know, while you're out learning, that's taking energy away from the family. And so, everyone needs to be on the same page, right? Uh one thing that I did when I was living with my mother and I was coding is I had a sign and I basically did the Pomodoro technique except I did about hour. So, if you're not familiar with Pomodoro technique, you work, then you take a break for certain amount. So, typically people do about 30 minutes and then they take a 10-minute break. So, uh what I did was I worked for about an hour and my mother, love her to death, she'd always be knocking on Hey, you want anything to eat? You know, um hey, can you help me move the couch? All this sort of stuff. Not that she's trying to bother me, but this is, you know, when you are coding, you need to get into a groove, right? You need to You need to be able to sit down and it might take you 15, 20 minutes to ramp up and then you get 40 minutes productivity in an hour. Everyone's different, but if you let the people in your life know that, okay, well, you know, you let your children know if Daddy has a sign on the door says, you know, busy learning or whatever it is, don't come in, you know, go ask Mommy. And then you have 40 minutes and you just have people respect that. And then in my case, I would put on the door and I come out and say, hey, it's Mom, is there anything you need, you know, April, anything I can help you with, whatever it may be and reach out to them. But it is important that people understand cuz they they may not, right? My mother to this day still thinks I'm just in there playing video games, right? She thinks I'm just in there playing StarCraft. You know, that's what she So, but she did respect the fact that I, you know, set some boundaries to a degree and and said, hey, you know what? I'm I'm I'm just trying to learn here. I'm trying to better myself and to do that I need I need to be able to focus. I need the time that it is required to accomplish that. And when you when you set those those boundaries, other people are on the same page and then you you also feel a sense of pride because now people know what you're trying to accomplish. And now it's like, oh, well, I don't want to let Mom down. I don't want to let let the girlfriend down, whatever it may be, the husband down. Um, so I I encourage you to explain your process and get people to be on the same page as you. Last but not least is a little bit more of a flexible be flexible with yourself. A lot of what we've talking about scheduling, having organized goals, being able to to inform people of, you know, how can they work within your system so that everyone's on the same page, you get the time you need. But, being flexible with yourself is probably the number one thing that you need to understand to a degree, right? What do I mean by being flexible with yourself? Well, if you're trying to learn to code, or even you're a developer and you're just trying to get better, and you you're saying, "Look, man, I'm already a developer. I want to go from junior to senior, and I want to do it in a year. I want to build I want to write a book. I want to build a course. Whatever it is." Um there's going to be days where you don't want to do it. There's going to be days where you're tired. Um you know, you just got off work. Your boss just verbally abused you, right? Whatever it is. Um you know, your boyfriend dumped you. Your girlfriend uh is cheating on you. Whatever it may be, right? There's going to be days where you're just in a awful place. Could nothing could have happened. You're just tired. You're you're bored. Um you're stuck on something. And for those days, is it okay to take a break? No. But, it is okay to change your attitude and change how you're going to refocus yourself. So, if you've been hacking away on a project and you've just hit something and you're you're you're at a wall, how can you continue your learning path? How can you continue to be consistent within your schedule? Well, you can um you can read some blogs, for instance. Learn about stuff. You can watch, you know, a 2-hour talk on ES6, ES7, whatever it is, whatever you're interested in. You you can go to hackathons. You can go to meetups. You have all this sort of stuff where, you know, go hang out with a friend who hopefully is a developer and, you know, do some pair programming. Do some Just change it up is what I'm trying to say. For those days that you're like, "God, man, I just I'm tired. Like, I love this. I love this, but I'm so tired today." And uh I don't want to do it. Well, do something else that's still going to help you accomplish those milestones. It's going to make you a better developer and make you stay on the path, right? Cuz um the thing is is every time every day, even if it feels like the tiniest of steps, you're that consistency is moving you one step closer to your goal. A one step closer to the milestone. You know, each one of these milestones are like a gas station. We're just filling up again before you get to your final destination. And that consistency through all of it is really what you're going to need to succeed in any aspect of your software career. And I I highly encourage you to try and keep it fun, keep it fresh, and keep it consistent because consistency will be what takes you to the next level of your career, what wherever that may be. But it uh anyhow, guys, that's my five tips on how to be consistent, how to work hard, essentially, and stay on the path, um whatever your path may be. So, I hope you found it helpful. Thank you for watching the video, and uh check out my channel sometime, I guess.