I see this kind of pattern seemingly increasing, especially from people who want to become a developer. I’m not trying to discourage anyone from being a developer, but I just want to give some sort of advice.

It’s patience

Many of the people who asked for my advice or help dropped out of self studying after a few months later. Reason? Well, some people thought it isn’t just their way to go, but others also thought they can’t just do it because for every single problem they encounter, they need to search it up on Google, find the correct solution, apply it, and if it does not work, redo the process, which is quite energy-consuming and requires a great deal of patience.

But yes! That’s everything about development. Ultimately it’s about making everything from nothing. Because you are not a superpower, you can’t know everything from the first time.

So.. in fact, if you are patient enough AND not capable in coding, you might be able to become a developer. Sometimes it’s not always about coding. It’s just whether you are there at the end of this relentless process of studying.

It’s hard

it just seems that in many people’s minds, picturing becoming a developer may be being portrayed is easier than getting an average job. The answer is no! The easy part is the ‘learning’ part. These days almost everyone in developed/developing countries have a computer and so on, and there are tonnes of free tutorial on the internet. You can virtually get all pieces of information to develop your stuff - by signing up for Coursera, etc.

The actual development part - at least until you get used to it - is really hard. You won’t just understand anything (for sure because I wouldn’t know anything about Hungarian until the moment I start to study it).

It’s tempting

I saw many friends or even those who reached out to me for advice, asking if they can get a job or how much they would be proficient in Javascript - for example, after studying it for six months. Okay. That works, but what’s really important is there are aspiring graduates from 4 years of bachelor program at prestigious universities ‘competing’ with you. I accept the fact that supply of developers is in a global shortage, but at the same time I don’t want you to enter low-standard companies where it turns out you can’t just learn anything, do useless scripting, fight with boredom with loosened, discouraged employees.

So I don’t know how I got until this paragraph - but to sum up - it’s hard to get into a good company, so practice and learn a lot; in as much as others can feel that. Don’t fall into temptations to ‘practice less’ and go to easy-entry positions at companies with low standards. You’ll probably just waste your time there.

Last words

Believe me, if you are there somehow at the end for whatever reason anyways after studying, you are going to be able to become a developer.

Written by Joel Mun. Joel likes Rust, GoLang, Typescript, Wasm and more. He also loves to enlarge the boundaries of his knowledge, mainly by reading books and watching lectures on Youtube. Guitar and piano are necessities at his home.