From Zero to Code Hero | My Coding Journey

I help aspiring developers learn coding and become freelancers

https://amineboukhari.substack.com/

My journey started in August 2021 I was In Algeria I had left Canada 7 months earlier in February.

I started learning web development when one of my friends told me I could make money online by making websites for clients, and I needed money at the time so I started looking at videos on how to learn web development.

The start of my journey

I started with HTML and CSS by following a free course with OpenClassrooms.

After 2 weeks to a month I finished the course, I was so happy that I was able to make my first website I felt like I was a TopG I said to myself “coding is easy” but I didn’t know what was coming next.

The struggle with Javascript

after this month the real struggle started I began learning JAVASCRIPT I remember it was really difficult I followed so many crash courses on youtube, freecodecamp, and w3schools, but I wasn’t getting it.

Starting PHP

After a month of struggling learning JavaScript without understanding most of the concepts, I was tired of it so I started PHP and MySQL. Again I wasn’t able to really grasps the concept and I wasn’t confident to start a project from scratch.

In November I knew HTML, CSS, some JavaScript and some PHP and MySQL. and at that time I remember someone told me to start making projects which was a nice advice but he forgot to mention making projects ALONE.

Because I started making projects, but I was only following tutorials on youtube like “How to make a calculator with Javascipt”, and “How to make an e-commerce website with PHP” I was making projects but I was only following youtube tutorials.

I couldn’t start a project on my own.

Joining a developer community

UNTIL I got a message from a guy I encountered in a hackathon telling me I could join his group of developers to learn on real projects.

So in December, I decided to join them it was a group affiliated with google which is called GDG Algiers (Google Developer Group Algiers), when I joined them they told me I needed to learn the MERN stack so MongoDB, Expressjs, Reactjs, and Nodejs which I did, they helped me a lot and I was gaining a lot of experience, I was feeling more confident and I was finally able to start projects by myself.

I worked on real projects and when I was stuck I would look on google, and if I couldn’t find any solution there would be a teammate helping me and that’s how I really learned to code.

Getting my first job

Finally in April after 5 months with them I finally got my first full-time job as a full-stack developer in a startup called Releasin.

It took me a total of 9 months before I got my first job it was really difficult but it was worth it.

The lessons

The lessons you can take from that are:

learn by building projects
join a developer community that you can learn from
work on real projects.

In a Nutshell

August → December: learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MySQL but I wasn’t able to make a project by my own because I was only learning by youtube without making projects from scratch.

December → April: Learned React, NodeJs MongoDB I was able to make a whole full stack project from scratch by myself because I learned React, NodeJs and MongoDB by joining a developer community and making real projects without following youtube videos.

April: I landed my first full-time job as a full stack developer alhamdulillah

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The DevHustler

I’m a freelance developer that left Canada to live on a secret Island in Indonesia and I’m helping aspiring developers learn coding and start their freelance career