It's safe to say everyone in the tech community has flirted with the idea of learning to code at some point in their career. But for those who don't know the first thing about the craft, it can be awfully intimidating.
Before you make the time and financial investment to begin your coding education, here is what a few Codesmith graduates wished they knew before enrolling:
Tiffany Wong:
What words of advice would you give to someone thinking about learning how to code?
If you’re, like me, in your mid-twenties and considering a switch, I say GO FOR IT! Why not? Do it now, and if you end up not liking it, you will still have more than enough time to pivot again and learn something else. If you’re a woman, I’m even more emphatically advising you go for it. It may be intimidating and it will be hard at times being in a field where women are so severely underrepresented, but you can do it. If you enjoy programming, don’t let anything else stand in your way of achieving your goal. Again, you CAN do this.
How can they best prepare themselves?
Anything that allows you to dig deep into the fundamentals of the language you’ll be learning in your program. It’s good to be able to make use of resources like code snippets from Stack Overflow, but as things become more complicated, the only way you will be able to debug is if you truly understand the concepts behind your code. I’d also recommend starting to get comfortable with talking through code. (Even if you start by just talking to yourself!) Communicating your thoughts can help clear your thoughts, and in most programming schools, you’ll be doing a fair amount of pair programming, so communication is crucial.
Isaac Durand:
What words of advice would you give to anyone thinking about learning how to code?
If you’re interested in programming in particular, give it a try, working through some free online lessons on your own. Better yet, go to a programming meetup in your area. The people who run these meetups do it because they’re passionate about helping others learn to code, and chances are they’ll be more than happy to welcome you into the community. Finally, reach out to friends or acquaintances who work as software engineers to learn more about their jobs and the paths they took to get there. Talking to other people my age who hadn’t studied computer science in school but had made the transition to working as engineers really helped me build up the confidence to go to bootcamp.
How can they best prepare themselves?
I think the most important thing is to get into a mindset of continual learning by programming regularly. Find a routine that you can commit to, whether it’s an hour every day after work or a few hours each weekend, and spend that time building your skills.
Wade Armstrong:
How can they best prepare themselves?
I spent time taking free Javascript classes online, and then ended up paying for Codeschool for a few months. It was good to spend a little time going over basic principles of how the language works. However, at the end of the day what I’ve learned from schools is that the rate of learning from a truly immersive experience is vastly higher than from any example-based learning. Attending in-person events at bootcamps was both the best way I found to learn and the best way to figure out what bootcamp taught in a way that worked for me.
What words of advice would you give to anyone thinking about learning how to code?
I’m 40, married, and have a son, which is not the profile of most bootcamp attendees. It was a big leap of faith to do this, but I’m already seeing it pay off. My message is that you can do it! Twelve to 14 weeks is not a long time, compared to the years of career improvement you’ll get from the switch. I, and several of my classmates, are also able to balance the demands of families with the extreme time demands of bootcamps. With my wife’s cooperation, we were able to block out specific chunks of time for me to spend with my son, and I’m able to spend real quality time with him every single day — and extra on Sunday! Going to a bootcamp close to home really helps.
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