Without a mentor? It's going to be super difficult.
What with all the online courses? I think not?
Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#12As the other answers say, you will need something specific to drive at. The field of software engineering is vast. You'll be repeatedly overwhelmed by its size and scope without getting anywhere unless you start, and develop skills on the way. Phrased differently, you don't know what you don't know. By far the best way to explore what you want to do and to gain the skills necessary is to do it on someone else's dime. Get a job.
Easiest way into a tech company in a technical role is through front end. (Let's kill a myth here: not because FE is easier—it's not, necessarily. But the risk is generally lower, since it's hard to really screw things up in javascript and your mistakes will usually be more traceable for others to clean up after you than they would be in, e.g., devops.) Give yourself 3 months to learn everything you can to pass an interview in javascript, html, and css. Then go to a non-silicon valley town with lots of tech (Austin, Boston, Chicago, LA come to mind) and go out for every front end job you can find in a mid size company.
If the company's too big, you'll get locked in the front end role without opportunities to explore other things. If it's too small, you risk (a) that it's the founder's lifestyle business without any real innovation, or (b) that it will grow so fast that you'll have responsibility piled on you and no time to learn. (I recently interviewed a guy like this. Super smart, but he joined a high-growth startup as a cheap early employee, and his expertise stayed unfortunately narrow because he had no time to grow, only to prop up his part of the system.) You're looking for a place with 30-70 engineers, whose senior technical people are over age 45.
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#13As the other answers say, you will need something specific to drive at. The field of software engineering is vast. You'll be repeatedly overwhelmed by its size and scope without getting anywhere unless you start, and develop skills on the way. Phrased differently, you don't know what you don't know. By far the best way to explore what you want to do and to gain the skills necessary is to do it on someone else's dime.…
This is the best advice in this thread. I would also focus primarily on a frontend framework like React after you learn the basics (dont bother with vue), since many mid-sized companies are needing people with these skillsets. All sites are going to have a frontend component regardless, might as well master this early
I had to conduct studies for Code For America on the junior dev market, I would also checkout Seattle, Anaheim, San Diego, Washington DC, Atlanta, Houston among other places
In the meantime while you focus mostly on frontend you can slowly learn backend / compscience on a slow ongoing basis
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#14As the other answers say, you will need something specific to drive at. The field of software engineering is vast. You'll be repeatedly overwhelmed by its size and scope without getting anywhere unless you start, and develop skills on the way. Phrased differently, you don't know what you don't know. By far the best way to explore what you want to do and to gain the skills necessary is to do it on someone else's dime.…
Great advice. As someone who is on the self-taught path, and employed as of recently, I would recommend the following as well
- Start digging into data structures and algorithms early and often. Leetcode is meme status now, but it does help to practice routinely. Don't wait until 2 days before an interview to try to learn how to these things. Grokking Algorithims, the Algorithm Design Manual, and Cracking the Coding Interview all helped me out along with constant practice
- assuming you'll be front end focus to break in, get a good understand of how the internet works (and be able to describe it well). It's a go-to interview question for front end positions
- Dig deep into Javascript. Understand why it's useful, and more importantly, what the issues are with it so you can avoid those pitfalls when working with it.
- Learn React. Vue/angular/etc are all helpful and good to know, but React is getting more widespread by the day. It's pretty easy to pick up once you have a good JS foundation, and there's tons of learning materials.
- Learn about webpack and what it does. You don't need to know how to configure it from scratch or memorize its docs, but know when and why its used and how it helps your project.
- Most importantly, learn how to get stuck. Try things that are really hard, get stuck until you want to give up, then try some more. Get comfortable not knowing how to do something, but figuring it out.
- Don't get too bogged down learning the right tech stack. Pick one and go hard on it for most of your time learning. No matter where you end up, the stack will be different. Starting over is common and most places expect you to have 'ramp up' time to get used to their dev environment/stack
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#15As the other answers say, you will need something specific to drive at. The field of software engineering is vast. You'll be repeatedly overwhelmed by its size and scope without getting anywhere unless you start, and develop skills on the way. Phrased differently, you don't know what you don't know. By far the best way to explore what you want to do and to gain the skills necessary is to do it on someone else's dime.…
By the way I should mention: I didn't just make this up, I actually _am_ a "self-taught" engineer working for a unicorn. These are the basics of how I got there. I had a bit of programming background—took 2 semesters of CS in college on my way to a history degree, plus a stats class that used R. Really though, a few months of study after college then jumping into a job in the right company is what can make it happen. These days, I interview a lot of other engineers, and this also includes some stuff that makes them more or less successful / more or less attractive to us as an employer.
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#16See this twitter thread: https://twitter.com/FeynmanThomas/status/1013697640830156800
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#17As the other answers say, you will need something specific to drive at. The field of software engineering is vast. You'll be repeatedly overwhelmed by its size and scope without getting anywhere unless you start, and develop skills on the way. Phrased differently, you don't know what you don't know. By far the best way to explore what you want to do and to gain the skills necessary is to do it on someone else's dime.…
Great advice. As someone who is on the self-taught path, and employed as of recently, I would recommend the following as well - Start digging into data structures and algorithms early and often. Leetcode is meme status now, but it does help to practice routinely. Don't wait until 2 days before an interview to try to learn how to these things. Grokking Algorithims, the Algorithm Design Manual, and Cracking the Coding…
>> get a good understand of how the internet works
Believe me, I have been spending the last two days understanding the difference between Internet vs World Wide Web.
Would you kindly offer your advise on how the Internet works?
Re: Ask HN: How do I become a self-taught software engineer in 1 year (full focus)?
#18[deleted]