How to Became a Self-Taught Software Engineer at a Major Tech Company
1. Pick one programming language. Stick to it. This was likely the best advice I was given at the beginning of my learning journey. When I first started out, it was overwhelming. Did I want to do front-end, back-end, something in between? Which languages are best for which part of the stack? I spent a few weeks reading and doing tutorials in different languages to test the waters. I was wasting time and confusing myself. The general advice is to find a project you want to do first and then use the language that best accomplishes the task at hand. I didn’t have a project in mind though (yet), so this wasn’t working for me. I started out by spending a few months to get familiar with programming fundamentals (data structures, functions, for loops, etc.). Around this time, I had a chat with one of my engineer friends. I thought I needed to be expert in HTML and CSS before diving further into JavaScript. That sounds silly now, but I imagine it’s how a lot of people feel — you think...