As a professional software engineer specializing in web development with nearly 2 decades of experience what I always tell people when they ask about school vs self teaching is that it depends entirely on yourself. You MUST be honest with yourself. Do you need the structure offered by a university? Do you find yourself chronically procrastinating on things in your life? Self teaching CS can in many ways be superior to formal university education but you must be extremely diligent to see those benefits. You must be very self motivated and most people asking this question are not as self motivated as one needs to be. That being said a good university CS curriculum will teach you all of the foundations you need for computer science and not necessarily software engineering. Most of that foundational CS knowledge is not directly used in web development; those things are very low level to computers and web development is quite abstracted from that. That isn't to say that those things aren't ever useful in fact those things are how you distinguish someone as an expert web developer but if your goal is a job then they can be distractions. If you have the time, a formal CS education can be an extremely good investment especially if you are the kind of person that needs external motivators (nothing wrong with that). As for self teaching it is hard for me to recommend a course/program/etc primarily because I learned without them and so I don't actually have experience with those programs and I know the quality can vary pretty wildly. I'm always a little weary of programs that make guarantees while asking for your money but they can be a good compromise between the external motivation of a formal school and the comfort of self learning. If I were to learn programming over again I would focus on project-based self teaching. I would start by going to youtube and watching a primer video on the extreme basics of web development to learn things like what HTML, CSS and JavaScript are, how the web works and how web projects are setup through things like npm and nodejs. Then with that basic knowledge I would start trying to make projects that are duplicates of programs I already use: text editors, chat programs, time management tools, etc. "Trying" is important here because you will fail and that failure is critical to learning and is something I suspect many web programs accidentally (or deliberately) cause their students to skip/avoid. Every part you fail on is something you should be Googling to figure out. I would avoid things like Stack Overflow because they typically just give the answer without much explanation. You're learning, the explanation is the important part. Become intimately familiar with MDN (documentation), the browser debugger and the browser console. The docs on MDN will hold the majority of the answers to any of your questions, you need only be able to find them. Googling and being able to read documentation is critical to your success as a developer. You will spend a, potentially, surprising amount of time doing those things well into your career. Being able to find the answer is more important than knowing all the answers. Frontendmasters recently published this frontendmasters.com/guides/front-end-handbook/2024/ and I would say that it's quite comprehensive and quite good though I don't know how beginner friendly it is but at the very least the outline on the left can serve as an excellent road map even if the articles they've written on the subject aren't clear to you.
@childlikekait
4 ай бұрын
Thank you for such a thorough answer. I really appreciate it!
@Constance609
5 ай бұрын
I go to WGU for Software Engineering and really like it. My company pays 100% upfront. It’s self paced as well.
@rubiemoonstone
5 ай бұрын
I would love to watch your process! You could share codes you’re learning or explain it to us in simple terms to better understand. Screen sharing sounds like a cool start!
@xobk
2 ай бұрын
Hi Kaitlin. Fellow Atlantan here, 36 years old, I’m actually graduating in CS from Georgia State in a few weeks. After watching a bunch of KZitem and reading Reddit posts back in 2020 I felt like I had to just bite the bullet and get the degree. Any bootcamp type of resource or Revature/Dev10 type places required some sort of degree. Plus I was still eligible for full Hope scholarship and whatnot. Have you looked into scholarships yet? I feel like you could be eligible for some really good ones. Also at school we have so many clubs and job events for girls who code, black girls who code, women in tech, etc. Ultimately though, you already have experience! I’m here because I’m looking for advice from you. I found your channel because I applied to an implementation consultant job through school and I don’t even fully know what that is yet lol. But it pays really well and is intriguing. Seems like it could be another one of these companies with a lot of downsides. My point is I think you are already much further along than you are telling yourself. Have you tried applying straight up to any other software roles? I’d be surprised if you couldn’t get an interview at Microsoft in ATL if you wanted one. Anyways let me know if I can answer anything about school. Happy to share. You can even have my notes if you need em. Your videos made me feel less alone in this weird struggle, so I really appreciate it!
@childlikekait
Ай бұрын
I love this comment so much! Thank you for watching and supporting. 🥹🫶🏾 Also, I have decided to go back to school for a degree! Next video will be an update on this. (:
@herdigitallemonade3353
5 ай бұрын
Self paced, part time, online bootcamp. I liked Nucamp 👍🏽
@Justin73791
5 ай бұрын
I was 100% self taught. I started my own business in 2009, and met face to face with clients for over 10 years. Eventually I moved and the pay offered to me by corporate dev jobs was close to what I was making with less headache. So I opted into a corporate job, and I was shocked how low of a bar this industry holds for quality work. Agile, scrum, project managers, frameworks galore have all distracted people what a software project can and in my opinion should look like. You'll never have this experience if you go through college, but to go the other route is 10 times harder. The choice is yours.
@childlikekait
4 ай бұрын
Interesting. Thank you!
@nightwing09x
5 ай бұрын
How are you doing! Love to see your face, you have a beautiful smile.
@childlikekait
4 ай бұрын
Thank you so much!
@anderwerw7109
5 ай бұрын
Ill give general advice because I don’t know what specifically in software engineering you want to go into, but self paced/ self taught programs don’t have as good accountability systems in place so you have to be very disciplined with learning to get something good out of it. They are cheaper than university and you can jump right into making projects. University offers more structured curriculum, you can network with other students(if you go in person) they can be a contact for potential jobs. University also gives you better understanding of fundamental computing principles(data structures, algorithm complexity, operating systems etc). Downside to university is it’s more expensive and you end up taking classes and doing projects that don’t help you with what you end up doing for a career of interview for a job. I’d also say try to get projects that demonstrate the skills you would need for a job you want. For instance if you want to go into back end systems development, code a socket server, and make projects that use libraries and frameworks that the company you are interviewing with works with.
@childlikekait
4 ай бұрын
Thank you for the input! I definitely want to do more project work this time around.
@moses.muchemi
2 ай бұрын
Is the 11-week training at Revature good enough to go independent?
@childlikekait
Ай бұрын
It may depend on what tech stack you’re trained in. Mine training in C# .Net was quite thorough.
@Constance609
5 ай бұрын
I go to WGU for Software Engineering and really like it. My company pays 100% upfront. It’s self paced as well.
@childlikekait
4 ай бұрын
This is one of my top choices at the moment. Since it’s self-paced, how does getting help/support go? Is there any community among the other students?
@Constance609
4 ай бұрын
@@childlikekait There’s a lot of support. I have a quick phone call once a week with my advisor just to go over progress and getting prepared for the next courses. The professors check in with you too, and you can reach them during their office hours. I haven’t tried any of the tutoring yet, so someone else may be able to chime in on that. I joined a couple of Facebook groups that are really helpful as well. Well ask each other questions and you’ll get an answer or someone will direct in the right place to get the answers you need. I’ve really enjoyed it so far!
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