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Why I Stopped Reading “How I Became a Software Developer” Articles
A piece of advice for aspiring software developers
One thing I wish someone told me when I was learning to code was to stop reading “How I Became a Software Developer in X Months” articles. So let me be the one to say it.
Stop reading those damn articles.
I know there will be some people resistant to this statement — especially those that have written them. So let me preface this by saying this is my opinion. If you love reading them, don’t let me stop you.
But if you’re an aspiring software developer, you’d be better ignoring their existence or at least taking them with the heftiest grain of salt.
Let me explain why.
“If I Can Do It This Fast, So Can You!”
One of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in my career is change it. Changing one’s career isn’t a simple task. It can’t be done on a whim — nor overnight. It requires an intense amount of focus and studies over a prolonged period of time. Unsurprisingly, it can cause both a financial and emotional toll on you.
One thing I learned early on as an aspiring software developer is that it requires an appropriate relationship between goals and hope. The grander your goals, the more hope you’ll need to push through the hard times. But it’s a precarious balance. At what point do goals become unrealistic and hope becomes false?
I learned that answer the hard way. You see, when I was first learning to code, I started at the bottom. I had next to no previous coding experience. No HTML. No CSS. Not even MySpace page customization.
But I was at a dead-end job and wanted a career with upward mobility. I had read a study showing that programmers had high job satisfaction along with comfortable salaries. That was the catalyst I needed to start researching developer jobs.
However, I knew the odds weren’t in my favor. I was coming into the tech field completely green and in my mid-20s. I didn’t…
