How to Quickly Learn Coding and Land a Job in Tech

From the day I wrote my first Hello World program, it took me two years to land a job at Amazon and another two years to get into Google. That’s because I accomplished this without having a Computer Science degree or attending a boot camp. I made countless mistakes along the way which made my path to becoming a Software Engineer longer than it should have been. I spent countless hours watching YouTube tutorials and paid for numerous Udemy courses, only to find that they added no real value. If I could go back in time and undo all the things that didn't work, I would be in the exact same situation as today within six months of starting programming. That’s exactly why I am writing this helpful piece.

Today, I'll cut out all the unnecessary fluff and provide you with the quickest route from beginner to full-time Software Engineer.

Avoiding Common Mistakes Most Programmers Make

Before I begin, there are three major mistakes that can slow down your progress to become a full-time Software Engineer. I will also share these three mistakes along the way, so stay tuned for that.

Choosing the Right Programming Language

As a new programmer, your first decision is, "Which programming language should I learn?" To help you answer that, let's discuss what beginners typically look for in a programming language.

Number one, the language should be easy and intuitive to write. It should not require learning very complex syntax and should be as close as possible to writing in English. Next, the programming language should be versatile and have many applications. As a beginner, you don’t want to learn a new language for every new project you want to build. In other words, the language should have great returns for the time you invest in learning it. Lastly, the programming language should be fast to write. You shouldn’t have to waste time spelling out the declaration of a new variable or simple iteration through a list. In other words, it should be concise and get the job done in a minimum number of lines of code.

As some of you might have already guessed, Python is the language that solves all these problems. It’s almost as easy as writing in English. It has so many different applications like web development, data science, and automation. Python is extremely fast to write when compared with other popular languages because it requires fewer lines of code for the same amount of functionality.

As an example, here are the same codes written in Java vs. Python. You can see that Python consists of a few lines while JavaScript contains many lines and long code.

1. const fs = require('fs');
2. const path = require('path');
3. 
4. const directoryPath = path.join(__dirname, '.');
5. const filePath = path.join(directoryPath, 'Code.txt');
6. 
7. fs.readFile(filePath, 'utf-8', (err, data) => {
8.     if (err) {
9.         console.error(err);
10.         return;
11.     }
12. 
13.     const lines = data.split('\n');
14.     let emptyLineCount = 0;
15. 
16.     lines.forEach(line => {
17.         if (line.trim() === '') {
18.             emptyLineCount++;
19.         }
20.     });
21. 
22.     console.log('Number of empty lines:', emptyLineCount);
23. });

1. my_file = open("/home/xiaoran/Desktop/test.txt")
2. 
3. print(my_file.read())
4. 
5. my_file.close()

Effective Learning Methods

Now that we know we should learn Python, let’s talk about how to do it. And this is where most new programmers make the first major mistake that slows them down. The mistake most beginners make is that they learn by watching others code.

Let me explain this by telling you how most people learn programming. Most newbies would go to a course provider like Udemy and look up Python courses. Then they pick one of these 20+ hour courses thinking that these courses are long and detailed and hence good for them. And then they never end up finishing the course. That’s because 20 hours of content is not the same as 20 hours of great content.

Right Way To Learn Code

Some people will go to YouTube and watch someone else code without ever writing any code themselves. Watching these tutorials gives them a false sense of progress. That’s because coding in your head is very different from actually writing down the code and debugging the errors. So, what is the right way to do it? The answer is very simple: you should learn by coding.

For this, you can go to this free website called learnpython.org. 

On this website, just focus on the basic lessons for Python and don’t worry about data science tutorials or any advanced tutorials. That's because even if you learn advanced concepts right now, you will not be able to remember them until you have actually applied them to a real-world problem. You can always come back to learn the advanced concepts in the future when you need them for your projects.

If you look at a lesson, each lesson first explains a basic concept and then asks you to apply those concepts to a problem. Feel free to play with the sample code. Think about other problems you can solve with the concepts you just learned and try to solve them in the exercise portion. Once you’re done with the basics, you’re good to move on to the next steps.

Building Projects

In the spirit of learning by coding, we would do some projects in Python next. In the beginning, it’s very hard to do something on your own, so we’ll take the help of experts. Watch the video below on 12 beginner Python projects. In this video, they build 12 beginner Python projects from scratch. These projects include building Madlibs, Tic Tac Toe, Minesweeper, etc., and all of them are very interesting. They walk you through the implementation of all these projects step by step, making it very easy to follow. But before you start watching this tutorial, there are two things you should know.

Setting up Your IDE

Number one, you should not watch this tutorial casually. Follow along if you really want to learn programming and become a Software Engineer. To follow along, you would need something called an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to build these projects. An IDE, in simplest terms, is an application where you can write and run your code. There are several popular IDEs for Python. This tutorial uses VS Code IDE, so you might want to download VS Code and set it up for Python before starting on this tutorial. Once you have completed this tutorial, you are ready to work on your own projects.

Developing Your Own Projects

Working on building your own projects will help you in multiple ways.

Number one, it will introduce you to how Software Engineers work in the real world. You will write code that will fail, and you’ll debug it and repeat the process over and over again. This is exactly what a day in the life of a Software Engineer looks like.

Number two, you will build a portfolio of projects by doing this. You can host your code on GitHub and put the link in your resume. This will help you attract recruiters and get your resume shortlisted.

Number three, building your own projects will give you confidence that you are ready to tackle new challenges as a Software Engineer. But what kind of projects should you work on? You can think of any projects that you find interesting, but here are some examples I found. You can build a web crawler, an alarm clock, an app that gives you Wikipedia articles of the day, or you can make online calculators. Some example projects are that you can also build a spam filter, an algorithmic trading engine, and an e-commerce website.

Preparing for Job Applications

Now you have a great resume, and you are confident about your programming skills. Let’s start applying for Software Engineer positions.

Wait a second. This is actually the second major mistake new programmers make. You see, in an ideal world, having good programming skills and a great resume is all you should need to become a Software Engineer. But unfortunately for us, tech companies like to play games with us in the interviews. They ask you specific kinds of programming questions in the interviews. If you don’t prepare for these questions, you might not get the expected results.

Essential Course: Data Structures and Algorithms

So, let’s see how to prepare for interviews. All the interviews are based on this one course that is taught to all Computer Science graduates. This course is called Data Structures and Algorithms. Fortunately for us, Google has created this course and made it available for free on Udacity. And the best part is that this course is taught in Python. In this three-month course, you’ll learn about different algorithms related to searching and sorting. You’ll learn about data structures like maps, trees, and graphs. Don’t worry if you don’t know any of these terms right now. I am sure that by the end of this course, you’ll be a pro. For that, just keep two things in mind. 

Number One, be regular and finish this course. As I mentioned earlier, most people start courses and never finish them. So, make sure you take small steps every day and make regular progress. 

Number Two, make sure you complete all the exercises they give in this course. As I have already said many times, the only way to learn coding is by coding. 

So, try to implement the algorithms on your own and complete all the assignments. Trust me when I say this: when it comes to interviewing for entry-level jobs, this course is the only difference between you and someone who dropped more than a hundred thousand dollars on a computer science degree. So, if you finish this course, you’ll be pretty much on par with someone who has a CS degree when you interview.

Interview Preparation

After completing this course on Data Structures and Algorithms, you'll have all the foundational knowledge needed to tackle interviews. To further sharpen your skills, practice with questions previously asked by tech companies. For that, you should use a website called Leetcode.com. 

On Leetcode, you will get interview-style questions. You can write your code and test your solution directly on the website. Leetcode is great for beginners because all the questions are tagged as easy, medium, or hard based on difficulty level. If you buy a premium subscription to the website, you can also filter the questions by the tech company that asked them in past interviews. 

You should start with easy questions and keep working on them until you can solve them in 45 minutes. Once that happens, you can move on to medium questions. When you start solving mediums in 45 minutes, you can start applying for Software Engineering jobs. If you are lucky, you will get the job right away. For most people, it will be a process full of disappointment and rejection.

Handling Rejections

And this is where they make the third and the biggest mistake of all—they quit. The main reason people give up early is because they overthink and complicate the interview process. After every rejection, they replay the interview over and over in their head to figure out why they failed and take every rejection personally. 

To avoid this, stay inside your circle of control and try to influence the outcome of your interviews but never get tangled in the things you can’t control. In other words, do your best to crack the interviews but try to be detached from the outcome of the interviews.