Every Link I Wish I Had When I First Started Coding

When I first decided I wanted to do programming professionally I was at the end of a Biology degree. My exposure to programming was a statistical analysis unit in the R programming language, and I left it more interested in the programming behind it, than the Biological data I was analysing.

I knew I had to side-step into the field of software engineering and wished I could have gone back to the start of my degree and done Computer Science.

I didn't want to go back to university, but was worried if self-teaching or boot camps were a solid enough path to become proficient and get a job.

From going to JavaScript night classes, to freeCodeCamp, to a training course I attended, I ended up getting a job as a Junior Software Engineer.

TLDR: Here's a list of links and resources that enabled me to go from knowing nothing to becoming a software developer.

The technical links

Over this time, I read lots of technical articles, blogs and documentation to fill in gaps that I didn't know, or learn like others did at university.

I had all these links as messy bookmarks stored on my PC, and thought they could be of use to someone else in a position I was in.

If you are a total beginner, begin here: here

If not, the links are split into 3 categories: I am a, I have and I want.

I am a

This section covers moving from where you are to a more senior technical position. This will differ depending on where you work, but helpful as a base.

Examples include: I am a junior front end developer, and want to be a regular developer.

I have

This section covers more specific issues you may be facing personally. From low motivation to impostor syndrome, there are resources to try and help.

I want

This is a wide section covering quite a broad range. It covers finding good resources, from: finding good technical YouTube channels, finding code help, finding high quality books, finding API's you can dev against, finding a free Computer Science degree online to podcasts/blogs. It has a read section to read Google style guides in your favourite programming language, a search section to job search and a practice section to practice a particular topic, like data structures and algorithms, including a language specific section (containing JavaScript, React, Swift, Go and more).

This is a lot...

Don't set some challenge to read everything start to end if you find something useful in the links. It's better for you to pick some small part, and stick to it. Analysis paralysis is all too common when there is something very, very large in front of you. 6 months spent solidly working on 1 goal you set, will yield far greater results than spreading yourself too thin across 25 projects.

Conclusion

Please add to this list if you can improve it, or something is not accurate. This has taken me a long time to compile and sort, so I don't doubt doubt I have missed bits. I also am not as good at Python for example, so my JavaScript links will be stronger than my Python links etc. etc.

I tweet my articles if you want to read more here.

Here's the link if you need it again.