Are you looking for a career switch to Software Engineering? Or maybe you're working in a different tech sector and would want to make the jump to Web Development.

Now is the best time to do so, considering the many resources available for free out there. Getting a college course or a bootcamp would be great, but not all of us can afford that in terms of time and/or money. Especially if you have a job and kids, self-paced is the way to go.

Thankfully, there are many free and self-paced courses out there. The problem is, there's too many and it's hard to vouch for their quality, ease of approach and effectiveness.

Not to worry! I've gone through the process of searching for the best free resources online so you don't have to.

But first, a little bit about me:

I graduated in Computer Engineering in 2011 and worked in Survey Programming for seven years. I moved through the ranks but found that I'd hit the ceiling in that field, which then led to burnout and a lack of general direction. So in 2020, I switched careers to something I enjoyed doing (which is writing--what I'm doing now). But then the AI nation attacked and the freelance job market felt a little too uncertain for my taste (admittedly it is better now, but time will tell). So again I've made the switch after realizing that I didn't want my coding education and skills to go to waste. My endgame is to make use of both my coding and writing skills. Right now, I'm on the job hunt process on top of my studies, because in case you didn't know, when it comes to this field...

...the learning doesn't stop.

In short, I've walked the path and now I'm passing it over to you.

You may ask: "But Harris, it says here that you've graduated in Computer Engineering and worked on a programming field. You already have the skills!"

That may be true, my astute reader. But the reality is that Web development has changed so drastically in the last ten years and dumb old me wasn't keeping up, so I still had to do a lot of work to be marketable. The only difference between this advice and what I did is that I started in the middle of this roadmap, not from the start.

I'm in my 30s-40s. Is it too late for me to learn how to code?

No. I truly believe that if you can learn how to play a video game, cook a recipe or learn how to navigate an online store, then you can learn anything, and that includes coding. It will probably be harder than most pursuits, but you don't need to do it alone. There are many others who are going through the same journey (like me!) and they are eager to help, because others have helped them too.

Prerequisites:

• A decent PC or laptop, at least 8GB RAM, SSD (not required but convenient)

• The desire to improve oneself

• An open mind. The humility and willingness to be a beginner because...

...the learning doesn't stop

Roadmap

If you're in a hurry, I'll give you the short version. These are the free online courses I recommend in sequential order, although I don't recommend you finish them all (but it won't hurt if you do). You can't go wrong with these three, and I'll explain the sequencing and my method in detail next.

• freecodecamp

• The Odin Project

• Full Stack Open

In the beginning... is freecodecamp

If you have no idea how programming works and it all seems like magic to you, start with freecodecamp. Freecodecamp will start you on the HTML and CSS track, which I suggest you go through in order to demystify the software development process. You will learn that programming isn't quite magic after all. People just managed to stick lightning into rocks and they connected those rocks to make it seem like it could think and calculate taxes.

Not magic at all.

The best thing is, you too could learn this totally-not-magic craft.

Start with the Responsive Web Design course, where you'll learn the basics of HTML and CSS--the base building blocks of websites.

Pros:

• Minimal setup, you'll be working on their code editor

• A low learning curve, it's like coding with training wheels

Cons:

• You might get too comfortable with those aforementioned training wheels--which is the first step to tutorial hell (more on this later).

While you're going through the course, start thinking about apps and user interfaces that you could build. Start imagining how you can create websites and software similar to the ones you use daily. It should feel a little closer to your grasp.

After going through HTML and CSS, the natural path would be to move on to JavaScript. I would suggest you continue through the freecodecamp path but move on to our next course after you go through these basics:

• Variables

• Conditional Statements

• Loops

• Functions

The reason why we'd want to switch is because we'd like to remove the training wheels at this point. In real-world software development, you will be expected to find solutions on your own through Google, dev forums, official documentation, or your hopefully-not-yet-overworked Senior Devs. You'll have to learn to find solutions on your own. That's just the nature of being an engineer, otherwise, you'd be stuck in Tutorial Hell.

"Thou must avoid tutorial hell at all costs" - every dev who has gone through it.

Avoiding Tutorial Hell

Tutorial Hell is a cursed state that happens when a student has gone through millions of tutorials but still can't build any project on their own. The student would then think they'll need to go through a million more tutorials to attain this independence, only for the cycle to continue. Welcome to Hell.

The antidote to Tutorial Hell is to work on projects on your own. Learn how to break down big problems into little bite-sized pieces so that each of those pieces is either:

a.) Immediately solve-able by your current skill level or

b.) Can now be solved by a Google search/documentation lookup

Aside from avoiding hell, it's also time for you to get used to working in a similar developer environment as other pro developers. I'm talking about VS Code, github, Chrome Dev tools etc. That way, you'll have early experience in using the tools of the industry. At this point it's time to move on from freecodecamp and for you to start with...

The Odin Project

But wait! This post has gone on for far too long! And I've led you to a path that takes a month at least anyway... so bookmark this post and I'll link part 2 of this series here.