5 Steps to become a successful self-taught programmer

So you want to be a Self-taught coder? Almost everyone at some point wants to have a feel of how coding works. while the process of becoming a programmer is not easy, learning programming by yourself can be much complex and time consuming. Here I give you 5 detailed points of how to become a self-taught coder:

• Get your mindset right
I want to learn to programming but I heard most companies don't take programmers without degrees seriously is one myth every self taught programmer has to overcome in other to get their mind in the game. truth is this is not true, the 2017 Developer Survey showed that 90% of Professional developers were self-taught. President Obama awarded self-taught programmer Margaret Hamilton the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work on NASA’s Apollo Moon missions. Steve Wozniak bought a Fortran book in high school and taught himself to program and then invented the personal computer and co-founded Apple, the largest company in the world. Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, is a self-taught programmer. So is Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram and Tumblr founder David Karp and the list goes on. When it comes to tech and good programmers, Silicon Valley stands first on the list and its worth noting that most of these programmers are self-taught. So before you decide to become a self-taught programmer, ask yourself whether you are ready to invest the time and energy into it.


• What do you want to do?
The prime reason why most self-taught programmers end up not being successful or get frustrated by the concept of self-teaching itself is their inability to decide on what they want to do. Do you want to become a Machine Learning guru or a site centric UI/UX designer? Knowing what you want to do and the field to explore is key to becoming a good self-taught programmer. Setting a target goal of what to become does not only enable you search for the right resources but reduces the stress of asking yourself so which programming Language should I learn first?.


• Explore resources
After identifying which field you are interested in, numerous resources including books, articles , videos and many more are available on the internet, most of which are free. While its definitely possible to combine many of these resources, learning a few, preferable two, at a time enables you to get in dept understanding of the rigors involved. For starters, I recommend python tutorials if you want to do anything other than web design or UI related programming. Python is an open source language and hence free to the general public. Its is practically easy to learn with it numerous libraries. The python language has been in existence for more than 20 years and its still ranks among the top 5 most used and wanted languages in 2017. HTML and CSS are languages I will recommend to students who are getting their gears right in UI/UX design. There are lot of programming languages out there to explore but learning most of these at the same time will just end up been not a good idea as you might either get confused and mess up a syntax or get frustrated when it comes to using what you've learned to solve complex problems or develop your own algorithms. The rule is to focus on one and explore the rest later. work continuously on mini project like developing a simple GPA calculator and then develop more sophisticated algorithms as your skills improve. one other way you can improve your skills is to collaborate with other programmers on GitHub or any other platform as such




• Talk to the experts
Just because you are trying to be a self-taught programmer does not mean you shouldn't contact people for help. Allowing an expert to critique a sample code you have written enables you to improve your coding skills through the recommendations they give on the code. An expert does not necessarily have to be someone who works at google or apple. your computer science friend can be your go to person if you find him/her reliable. your school's CS professor can also be one of the go to people if you encounter a daunting problem in your code or need some clarifications on your material.


• Never stop learning
A time comes when you have it all. your coding skills are superb, you have developed more APIs than one can count. well as the saying goes with great power comes great responsibility. Continue working with others to develop and explore more algorithms and Never stop learning, you just might not know when your algorithm will be the next revolutionary thing the programming world needs.