After two faithful years of learning to code, I can testify to you that my journey does not reflect the advertisements saying “You can learn to be a programmer in three to four short months.“ I can honestly say that I am still learning to code.

When I began my coding journey I had no prior knowledge. It was something that i felt was necessary to be successful in my next entrepreneurial project. I took a big leap of faith and began looking online for ways to learn.

I was amazed by the enormous amount of free content, schools, and programs. I didn’t know what was quality or nonsense. I finally decided on freecodecamp.org. I made it through the HTML and CSS modules but still had no clue of what I was doing(freecodecamp.org is amazing!). My lack of conceptual understanding and vocabulary left me unsatisfied and pushed me to continue digging deeper.

I continued to code, watch YouTube videos, educate myself on programmer vocabulary, and work to grasp the underlying concepts that make programming work.

I have been able to continue learning because I enjoy coding, mathematics, problem-solving, and the physics involved in computer science. Programming is not something to pursue for easy money. You will quickly burn out, give up, or find yourself in another job you hate.

My experience thus far allows me to say, with confidence, if you do not love coding stop and find something that lights a spark inside of you. Coding is a tough, serious business that the world depends on to function.