(Programming is a rather logical and absorbing career if given the chance. However, it may seem difficult or even intimidating to dive into the code-infested waters of such a trade.) Many people interested in starting a programming career don’t really know where and how to start; many are stuck believing they have to take the traditional college route. However, I’m here to tell you that there is another way, but it takes a lot of personal time, discipline, and major conviction to really learn. Today I will provide you with the pathway I used to get into Web Development and still use to continue building my career today.

First you have to start out by learning and deciding what types of jobs you want. I personally researched four: Web Designer, Front-end Developer, Back-end Developer and Web Developer. Is there any one of these that tickle your fancy?

• Web Designer: He/she develops and creates, using color schemes, typography, frameworks, logo design etc. Occasionally knows a bit about coding mostly HTML and CSS.

• Front-end Developer: Once the design work is done, it gets passed to the Front-end Developer, who has knowledge in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript among/or other front-end languages. They make the designers work come to life and give it some functionality.

• Back-end Developer: As for the Back-end he/she takes the styled site or app and makes its functionality work along with databases and external servers. 

• Web Developer: The Web Developer is essentially the “guru”; he/she needs to be versatile in all three previously named jobs so he/she can design and code.

Thanks to my ambitious nature, I picked Web Developer and started researching how and where to start this multifaceted career, and lord behold, came up with some good results.

I found Codeacademy, a free programming teaching service. Here I started to build my Front-end Development skills, at first taking four courses: HTML & CSS (Structure and style), Javascript (functionality), and jQuery (simplified functionality and actions). Because they also offer Back-end languages I decided to take Ruby. From the start, it honestly is a very user-friendly language to learn.

To build on those skills I moved onto Treehouse (my rather cozy cyber home), which has individual structured tracks for each career. Because I still had no knowledge about Web Design at this point, it was the next logical step to take on the “Web Design” track. I learned Typography, how to use Photoshop & Illustrator Adobe, creating mockups, and various mechanisms for designing concepts. Later, with the completion of this track, I took “Front End Web Development” and “Rails Development” (Back End framework based on Ruby)”. I also supplemented all this with attending a coding bootcamp in Chicago (more about this later!), which definitely helped with my lack of understanding of Ruby on Rails. This introduced me to an actual tech industry environment, and the hands-on experienced it gave me was deeply gratifying.

Once you’re comfortable with your career choice and programming language, don’t hesitate to just randomly and continuously create projects. These don’t necessarily have to be major projects; they can be simple things like creating a loader, an animation, or a blog. Just remember that there will be a period in your learning curve that will seem very difficult, but keep pushing and practicing. Your best friend when you’re stuck will be Google, StackFlow, Quora, or even other people’s code. Also, keeping up-to-date is crucial (I mean, who doesn’t want to be the next insert some famous programmer or innovator here), so reading up on programing is a must. Make sure to follow programming blogs, research, work with open source projects, or check out documentation on a language. And as always, keep coding!!!

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