The world crisis is forcing many to change jobs or even completely change their specialty. You have to learn new skills and professions. A great choice in this case may be the profession of a programmer. It is interesting, comfortable and pretty profitable. In this article, we will try to answer the question of how to get started in IT from scratch.
First choose a niche, then a programming language
Development has many ways to choose from. Some want to work on the front-end, while others delve into back-end, mobile, or game development, etc. Where to begin and how to pick the best direction?
Check job websites and positions opened in your chosen niche. What is the threshold for entry and what are the prospects for growth? Check out job vacancies and salaries. By the way, don’t rely on the location. Good developers are in great demand all over the world. For example, software developers in Ukraine have clients reside in Europe, the Netherlands and Germany.
You’ll see that a fair salary relies on the programming language in addition to the developer’s expertise and market. For instance, a research by GitHub found that Python is the most popular language followed by Java, Javascript, C#, and so on.
You can also follow a narrow path by learning more specific languages like Kotlin, Nix, Go, Rust, or Ruby. Furthermore, companies can pay more for experts who know these languages.
Find an internship opportunities
If your city has a large number of IT companies, find out what they specialize in and whether they teach coding from scratch. It may be an awesome chance for you because certain employers in a highly competitive industry are eager to make an investment in your professional growth.
Long-term internships are often intended for experts with a “zero” level. Your training will probably be time-consuming and unpaid, but you will have a mentor, the chance to learn a programming language, and the chance to see the off-stage life of any IT organization.
On short internships, novice developers learn popular frameworks – Spring, BigData, UJS, React. But it all relies on the company’s area of expertise and the program used. This is where some fundamental knowledge of a programming language can be useful.
Save resources for study and self-education
First, let’s talk about students. Well, students have access to a long list of complimentary software and licenses from top software and technology vendors. For instance, JetBrains, the company behind the Kotlin programming language, offers free educational licenses to students. Also, Microsoft offers a wide range of services and educational programs. Some services, however, are accessible with a university permission.
To explore some version control systems and repositories (which are of paramount importance in development) use Git and GitHub.
But what if you are no longer a student? No worries, the aforementioned JetBrains offers courses for novice developers as well. Additionally, Oracle, one of the Java developers, offers tools for certification preparation. Don’t forget about Git and Github either; even without a student package, here you’ll learn some languages from scratch as well as online repositories with the full support of a devoted community.
Of course, development is about life-long learning and development. So books, YouTube videos and thematic resources should become a regular routine.
Try to stand out from other newcomers
If you are familiar with the language’s fundamentals, create your own project. Choose a topic that fascinates you, create a task, break it down into its component parts, then automate it. Yes, there will be several challenges, bugs, and Klingon words. However, you’ll get an invaluable experience.
Then publish the project to GitHub – it’s good that you are already familiar with it – and attach a link in your resume. The fact that you are aware of the well-known online service and are generally involved in open source will pleasantly surprise the future employer.
