Surviving your first 6 months as a developer
Georgia used to do marketing for Webantic but for the last 6 months she has been learning front-end development. We asked her to share some thoughts and tips on the experience so far.
My first six months as a developer in an agency involved a lot of work.
In your first six months of developing there are some things you should know:
- It's not going to be easy
- At some points your brain may feel like exploding
- There will be a lot of "what" moments
But the feeling you get when your site goes live makes all the work worth it.
Chances are your code will not work the first time. It may be frustrating but then you just try for a second time and, well, that might not work either but keep trying you’ll eventually get it... probably.
One thing you need to be prepared to sacrifice is your computer storage! Every time I start a new project there seems to be a new dependency or bit of software I've never used before. My hard drive is full of programs and software I'm too scared to get rid of. Just in case I might need it again.
Also it's definitely not all fun and games, you have to be prepared to do some manual work. In my first month I had to take display:flex; off a bunch of components (thanks guys). There is all sorts of really manual jobs involved in building stuff from data entry to manually altering loads of things by hand.
The best part of learning to be a developer is when you finally understand something, especially in JavaScript. It's such a great feeling (cue dancing polar bear)
Surviving your first six months of developing definitely requires patience and perseverance. Also be prepared to have family & friends ask you about ‘the internet’ all the time… I've loved every minute of it though.