For the past 11 months, my time learning how to code has mostly been learning how to learn. Introducing myself to programming has taught me many things. I’m going to try my best to describe the most important thing I’ve learned so far below:
Even when you think you are, you’re not alone.
I spent the first 3 months “learning how to code” not coding anything. When I first googled “how to learn how to code” I was overwhelmed. There was so much information ( and a lot of it was free ) but I had no idea where to start. What language do I learn? How many should I know to get a job? What is GitHub? How does a computer even work?
I wasn't just learning how to code for no reason. I wanted to solve public health problems using technology, and that meant knowing how to build websites and applications. But like I said before, I didn't know where to begin. I showed up at meet-ups just to rub elbows with people already working in tech. I introduced myself to strangers, networked, and soaked up as much advice as I could. For the first few months, this was enough because I was learning about a field that was completely foreign to me…but it didn't take long for me to notice that there weren't many people that looked like me in those rooms.
See, at the time I thought I was alone, but I quickly realized that sometimes you need to do a little more searching to find others that are exactly like you. I decided to start a group: Aspiring Black Coders (ABC) for other self-taught, black learners to use the community as a free resource to learn and grow careers in tech.
Within this community, I was finally able to choose a language to start learning, to be recommended easy coursework to build computer science foundational skills, to have someone sit down and explain to me the difference between GitHub and git, and to learn how to code with others that looked like me. Eleven months later, I’m still learning. I actually still consider myself a beginner…but the most important part for me was not doing it alone.
