Introduction: Code Newbies

Building your raw skills

As a code newbie, your chief job is building your raw skills. You can be taking a college course, a paid course online, a paid boot camp (like I did), or using great free resources like FreeCodeCamp, FrontendMasters, TreeHouse, The Odin Project, Codecademy, or the “University of YouTube” (like I also did).

Learn the basics of web development

Coding careers are very diverse. You don’t have to do web development; there are other career paths like Data Science, Cybersecurity, Cloud, Dev Ops, and Mobile Dev. That being said, web development is by far the most popular, and you’ll probably have to learn a bit of it no matter what you do.

Building your portfolio

The primary artifact you will produce is your portfolio, or, as I call it in the Marketing Yourself chapter, your “Proof of Work”, which can include a blog. You basically want to demonstrate passion and engagement with your chosen skill and build cool shit.

Roadmap for newbies

However, there’s a lot else you can do on your way there:

• Learn the lingo
• Make up levels for yourself
• Explore paid learning
• Make a public commitment
• Find a community
• Teach to learn
• Cover your bases
• Start contributing to open source