Ademir Alijagic

Mar 08, 2023

How I Learned to Code in 2 Months

I switched my career from having worked in business and marketing into a developer position in the span of 2 months, I had no programming skills, and today I’m working full-time as a JavaScript Developer.

I got paid from day one of my reeducation by joining a Coding Bootcamp. In this article I will tell you how I got here, and how you can do the same.

How do you a job as a developer with no experience?

The answer is Bootcamps.

And to give you an idea of how fast you can get hired for a programming job, let me tell you a bit about my background. Before I started my Bootcamp, I would have never considered myself a developer, let alone loving to code!

I was 30 years old at the time, and I have a degree in mechanical engineering, which I never used as one as I found it boring and old-school, and I’ve worked most of my career in business and marketing, which I’ve liked a lot more.

I was never a big fan of math or interested in computers and in fact during my engineering studies I had one assignment using the programming language Python, and I remember being so uninterested back then, I remember thinking phew, glad I’m not studying computer science like some of my friends did….

So how did I end up a developer?

Well, throughout my career I had to create and manage a number of websites, and I used website builders like Squarespace, Wix, and Kajabi many times. Through sheer necessity sometimes a had to figure out a way to tweak the websites to look different than the original click-and-drag templates.

This is where my interest in coding started. I basically started googling how to do certain things like removing the footer on a mobile or removing the navigation, and the solutions that popped up were CSS code, which is the programming language used to style websites.

And up until I started the Bootcamp, my knowledge of programming stayed pretty much the same, I googled something I needed, copy-pasted a bunch of random code I didn’t understand and hoped it would eventually give me the result I wanted. Sometimes it did, and sometimes it didn’t.

I was deeply reconsidering my career at the time, and I was very curious about how interesting real programming was, and I started learning a bit of code on the website freecodecamp.org in my spare time, and I absolutely loved it! I happened to mention this to my sister, and two days later she sends me a link she found online to an intensive 3-month program, a JavaScript Bootcamp.

What is a Code Bootcamp?

And a Bootcamp is an intensive course aimed at teaching you all the industry-relevant skills in a short amount of time, usually 3 or 4 months, and this path of getting into development has become very popular.

I read the ad, found it interesting, applied through the online ‘logic test’ and a couple of days later I got a call from them, and over the course of 2 weeks, I was interviewed and hired to join their Bootcamp. The deal I signed was that they pay me for my training, they find a suitable workplace for me after the training, and in return, they get a share of my salary for a year.

Today I’m paid to learn something completely new, I’ve got an easy and extremely fast entry into an exciting industry. For me, it’s a really good win-win deal.

So, is joining a Bootcamp right for you?

Well, you have three main options if you want to get a job as a developer, and I’m going to walk you through the research I did on them when choosing for myself, so you can take a more informed choice for yourself.

With that said, everyone is biased, and anyone giving any advice will always base their assumptions on their own experience, therefore take everything I say with a grain of salt, read on the topic, find someone who disagrees with me, and make up your own mind before committing to anything. Remember though that in the end, a suboptimal decision is way better than no decision, and never starting.

Option 1 is getting a Computer Science degree.

Which is depending on your country is either paid or free and has entry qualifications like high school grades to get in. By now however there is a lack of developers worldwide, and there is a huge incentive by companies to hire people with the right skills, despite lacking a diploma.

And people with computer science degrees will be among the first to tell you that getting a degree might be a waste of time, as the curriculum is not very hands-on, and most of the time you spend on the school bench getting an engineering degree you are not learning code.

I will definitely help you get a job, and it might help you negotiate a better salary to take a degree, but you have to take into account the 3 or more years you are gonna have to put down into your degree, which by the end of it, may not even teach you relevant industry skills, has probably cost you a lot of money, and potentially keep you from starting to work sooner.

University degrees I find are starting to be a thing of the past, especially in a quickly changing industry whereas as a developer you constantly have to be learning, and traditional curriculum just can’t keep up. Therefore I would only recommend getting a degree in computer science or similar if you’re young, you want to study for the first time, coding sparks an interest for you. The experience of being a full-time student is really good for your growth into adult life, and you do learn many useful things (like how many beers you can drink whilst still finding your way back to your dorm).

If you have the time and commitment for three years in school, I don’t think you’re gonna regret it, but for anyone looking to reeducate themselves like me, I would not recommend it because of the alternatives out there.

Option 2 is being self-taught – AKA learning by yourself using online sites.

Being self-taught can be free or paid but even a paid course is usually much cheaper than what you are going to be paying for attending a traditional school system with tuition fees, and expensive books. I remember buying the most expensive calculator which was mandatory back when I was studying, it was ridiculous-sly good at doing calculus (bu dum tsss). And there are plenty of free sites like the one I started with which I can highly recommend by the way.

Freecodecamp.org s the website I used and is completely free, they take donations if you feel grateful for their service, and I have found it to be one of the best sites to make the learning stick for me, where there is no focus on video, but rather exercises with text and interactive feedback, where you solve increasingly more difficult challenges which culminate into bigger projects like creating a portfolio website. They also do have a very good Youtube channel which I can link below in the description.

Compared to many other career paths I find the developer community to be quite open to hiring people with no formal degree. Your skills are often put first and foremost and it seems to become more and more popular.

With that said, you will see a lot of job listings that specify they are not considering self-taught candidates, and I think that is important to acknowledge if you are going down this path. In essence, it means that your options will be more limited than with a degree, at least for your first job, and you might be prioritized less for promotions in the future.

I would recommend the self-taught path for people with limited time to learn, who have a full-time job, but know they would like to switch to programming in the long run, and don’t mind waiting for the right company to come along and hire you because they value your skill over your lack of a degree.

Option 3 and the one I went for is completing a Bootcamp.

This is usually a paid full-time intensive program. In my case, I pay nothing upfront for the program, I got a laptop and all the tools needed to attend. In return they take a cut from my paycheck as I start working as a consultant for them for the minimum duration of a year.

The benefit of this option is that there are no formal qualifications needed. In my Bootcamp, we were people from all walks of life, with an average age of about 30, some with a master’s degree, others with only a high school diploma. So, it can be a really good deal for people wanting to switch career paths, and it’s often marketed in this way.

The downside to joining a Bootcamp can be an extensive interview process. We were 18 people who were selected for the Bootcamp among 100’s applicants. So, although there are no formal requirements you will still have to qualify.

And the key to making the cut I found is to show that you are highly motivated to learn, show that you are capable of solving logical problems, and show that you are highly interested in the languages you are learning, which was mainly JavaScript in our case.

Another downside is that you have to pay for it, in my case out of my salary, and sometimes they have an upfront cost as well.

The benefits however are that it is the shortest track you can take to starting a career in software development. Do you want to work with the front-end? Back-end? Data science, or video games? Then there is a Bootcamp out there that will take you there in a couple of months. And as with my case, there are often good incentives to join a Bootcamp because you will be getting into your first job immediately, getting experience and by the time it would have taken you to get a degree you might have 3 years of work experience under your belt.

Many people would probably not like signing off to give someone a piece of their paycheck for an agreed-upon time, as this makes your starting salary lower than what it would be otherwise. But for others, this can be a win-win situation as you get a fast track into an industry without jumping through the hoops of formal education.

I would highly recommend the Bootcamp path if you are like I was.

You’ve been working a few years, and you want to change careers, but you don’t want to go back to being a full-time student with no paycheck. In addition, it’s perfect for you if you like a fast-paced learning style, you want to get into programming as fast as possible, and you only want to learn the skills that are relevant to the job market.

With all of that said, any decision once again is better than no decision. If you really want to see how programming is, my advice is to just start learning, like with the website I mentioned freecodecamp.org Programming is really not as difficult, and cryptic as it might seem. It’s a skill like anything else and anyone can learn it.