Taking The Leap Into Coding

in #programming8 years ago

CODE

When I first saw a terminal window populated with data I felt tiny, confused, and intimidated. As if I was a stick man confronted with a wall of incomprehensible letters and numbers.

Having built some complicated excel spreadsheets designed to track and run calcs on commodities futures contracts, I knew I needed something more powerful to truly dig down into the data. However, every time I set eyes on computer code my stomach churned. Plus, I had always assumed I was simply not smart enough to code. That stuff was for savants and people with Aspergers or something.

Taking The Plunge

My first dive into coding came about a year ago when I was between jobs and needed something productive to do. I signed up with Code Avengers because their layout actually looked inviting rather than intimidating. After a few courses, and success at making a turtle draw circles and squares I realized this was doable.


From talking to some people that work at Quant Trading houses I learned that they were all using the R programming language to mine their data and build their trading strategies. That led me to Datacamp and their tutorials on R, which are excellent. Despite their excellence, I got a bit demoralized, because R is a bit more complex, especially trying to decipher the documentation on CRAN. I persevered and made it through 5 of their R courses and have begun to create things in R. One thing nagged at me though. I realized I needed someone to teach me to THINK like a programmer. I needed a fundamental base in how programmers think in order to properly make use of the R language. Or any language for that matter...

Hit Me With The Firehose

How to learn? Well, first I had to accept the reality of my situation. I have two kids under the age of 3, so going off to a secluded bootcamp for two months, leaving my wife to fend for herself, was not an option. Fortunately, the coding bootcamps have moved online, and their functionality is exceptional. I visited Course Report and started sifting through all of the reviews. It took me a few days to narrow the field down to just a couple players. When I realized that I wanted to both learn how a programmer thinks as well as learn how to build programs, and that from there learning R would be much easier, I was able to make a decision.

The Firehose Project won the day with it's killer combo of:

  • Two week free trial
  • Rolling start date (basically every Monday), meaning I could start right away
  • Price! At USD $ 7,000 it was on the lower-middle range
  • 6 month course duration was not too long or too short...25 hours per week was juuust right
  • One-on-one mentorship with professional Software Engineer
  • Multiple payment options sealed the deal

4 Weeks In

Now 4 weeks into the course, I am happy to report that I have created my own profile page, my first app, and am on my way to producing a Yelp! clone. The people behind Firehose are clearly passionate and have given a lot of thought to what they are trying to do. I am continually impressed with how they layer on the knowledge and then throw you a challenge to reinforce what you just went over.

Plus...I am having fun.

Hot Damn!

Sort:  

You are an inspiration! You basically describe My situation even tho I'm way behind compared to you (only one kid and still programming circles at khan academy).
Thank you for sharing, will follow your journey as I decide what roads to travel.

Glad to hear it. It is a strange world that the coders inhabit, but now there is a lot of stuff that makes it more accessible. It is a lot of fun to build things. Best of luck on your journey!

Congratulations @jdoleiv! You have received a personal award!

Happy Birthday - 1 Year
Click on the badge to view your own Board of Honor on SteemitBoard.

For more information about this award, click here

By upvoting this notification, you can help all Steemit users. Learn how here!