My Path

From 2019 to 2021, I taught myself modern web development. What began as a fun hobby eventually turned into a completely new and exciting career trajectory for me. I taught music at the time, and would take my spare moments between lessons and at nights hacking away at projects and learning from online resources.

It was a blast and has changed my life. Well, obviously in the career department! But teaching myself to properly program was a surprising discovery in itself. I really impressed myself with how much I could figure out on my own with the enough resourcefulness. Plenty of folks I know benefitted from school, bootcamps, or tutors. But I would strongly encourage trying to self teach, if you're curious!

Who This is For

Absolute beginners! Intermediate learners. Anyone inbetween! If you are doing this as a hobby or are interested in working full time, then these will help along your journey.

The most challenging part about self teaching is the lack of structure in the curriculum. This article will be a mix of what worked for me as well as what I would do differently if I could. The best of both worlds!

It's also worth noting this is for full stack web development specifically. The gist is that web developers can be put in two camps: those that focus on solely UI (a more designer approach) or take a more balanced, logic handling approach (more engineering and data oriented). Both are highly valuable, and the materials below guide you through both, but I lean more in the direction of full stack vs pure front end in my experience.

That said, let's start with how to approach these resources.

The Mindset for Learning

These are topics all unto themselves. Almost cheesy, but important enough to share:

Focus on Foundations First

Frameworks come and go. They also hide the tricky parts of using certain tech. Writing React is meant to be easier than vanilla JS once you get the hang of it. Get really good at vanilla first. Same for CSS and HTML — it's invaluable to be really comfortable with the basics first so that you can easily transition from tooling.

Be Consistent

Musicians will be familiar with this. Practicing saxophone 30 minutes every day is better than 4 hours once a week. The same is true of programming. You learn inbetween sessions, often, while washing dishes. The routine facilitates that.

50% Rule

Practice learning the way that artists do with the 50% rule. The gist is you should spend some time learning from materials - books, blogs, tutorials. An equal amount of time you should be creating (just for the sake of creating).

It's both a sanity check and it's a way to actually deepen your learning. Doing this will actually instill the confidence that you can write a few lines of working JavaScript, or style a site. And it's more fulfilling to be stepping away from the tutorials and genuinely creating.

Some resources are good about encouraging this. Books or videos sometimes come with practice problems. If not, make up your own!

This is the hardest part. That's ok! It gets easier the more you do it. Start small - 5 minutes of study, 5 of practice. Then 15. 30. An hour, two — a day, a week. You'll be amazed at how quickly you grow this way.

Resources For Learning Web Development

JavaScript

Start with JavaScript! HTML and CSS are easier, but refining JavaScript will take the most time. Eat the frog first and start here. For any HTML and CSS you need to know while learning, get the bare bone basics, just enough to start scripting. I used a bootcamps' prep course, though I'd recommend a book or alternative course.

Head First JavaScript is a fun and readable guide. Free Code Camp also has a great course on JavaScript that's interactive, perfect for the 50% rule.

HTML, CSS, and Refining JS: The Odin Project

The real bulk of my learning was done through the Open Source Site The Odin Project. Wildly thorough, the project guides you through just getting started to building full stack apps. All along the way, you are challenged with suggested projects to try out what you learned.

The site itself primarily links to other resources, all of great quality! It's a great demonstration of what your continued learning will look like on the job, but with the structure of a curriculum. Volunteers maintain it, so the content has stayed relevant through the years

The course is an overview, and there are a few holes here and there. But the focus on what and how to learn each piece of the web development puzzle is invaluable.

One note — It's ok to completely crash and burn on a project. I got stuck at one point on an object oriented JS project and simply needed to move on. That is ok! There are other sources that can help fill gaps below.

Frameworks and Refinement

To fill in those gaps, getting even more experience building apps and learning from others is crucial. The curriculum above is a great starting place, but it takes more portfolio development to feel really confident in development.

Most of my favorite video courses are by Wes Bos. React, Next.js, and even his beginner JS course were a great, hands on way to see how individual pieces played together. They're fun, practical, and no-fluff guides.

Level Up Tutorials are quick guides to getting up and running with a certain piece of tech. It's staggering how much Scott has put out on this site. Find what ever interests you at this point. Balancing the fundamentals with a piece of new and interesting tech like GraphQL or Gatsby at this point is fun! Not to mention, an indicator of passion and curiosity in development.

These two also host a podcast called Syntax. I listened to their show a lot to get up to speed on what's modern, and also to plain old learn how developers speak. It's a bit easier to pick up context from conversation than just from text, in my opinion. And it's another way to learn while washing the dishes!

Going Pro

More on mindset: It will be a slog. Hundreds of applications may yield only a handful of interviews.

The Odin Project does a great job of offering resources for this phase. I would just add this much:

Algorithms

They are a big chunk of it.

Computer Science style algorithms weren't a big part of interviewing for me. But learning them still made me a much better JS dev. Colt Steel's course is a great way to get familiar with them.

Cracking the Coding Interview is essential reading. Just reading the first half of the book and trying out the first few problems will be good practice. You don't need mastery here, just familiarity.

The type of algorithms I did do were more toy problems, à la what's on CodeWars. A problem or two a day will keep your problem solving skills fresh.

General Technical Knowledge

One technical interview I took was a much more trivia-style. Google "React Interview Questions" and you'll find what I'm talking about.

Spending a bit of time learning these (and the principles behind them!) and then adding them to a spaced repetition system helped me integrate them. Podcasts also helped here — this type of interview is mostly to gauge if you can speak like a developer.

Portfolio

For the big pieces on your portfolio, write out a short readme on what the app does, the stack, challenges, and major features. This is both for anyone looking at your work and for yourself when you interview.

It's one thing to be able to talk abstractly about third party integrations. And another to say "Yeah, when I was building my Next app, I used the Stripe API to handle payments on the server. First I..."

Open Source

The classic paradox - entry level jobs ask for 2 years of experience. I've heard that client work or tutoring has helped people here. For me, I really enjoyed getting experience through Open Source.

Look on Code for America's site to see if there is a chapter in your area. If not, some groups may still be working virtually. I'd recommend this over searching github for projects for a few of reasons:

1. You'll likely get experience working with volunteers with different skills. Designers, researchers, and data analysts may work on the same project. The same is true with programming - you may be the front end expert in a team of backend devs.
2. You'll learn fast the hard skills of programming in a group. Setting up a new dev environment, using git as a collaboration tool, and participating in code reviews are all part of the experience in open source and on the job.
3. It's more fun!! The people here want to help you contribute and grow. The projects are for great causes. And writing code that genuinely serves other people in tandem with other volunteers is wildly fulfilling.

Contributing to open source can be a commitment. It's well worth the effort, though. The confidence and support system you have through it can counter balance the challenge of applying for a job.

Good luck!

Take what works for you and leave the rest. Let me know if this helped! Self teaching can be an isolating path, so feel free to reach out and share where you are.