3 tips to help you become a software developer faster

When I was little, how computers and their software worked was always a mystery to me.
All I wanted to do was understand how these amazing things were created and start creating them myself.

I started my quest asking questions and researching. As soon as I heard about software development, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I started learning HTML, CSS, and JS using simple tools and resources: a Text Editor(Sublime), a browser, and w3school.

As I’ve continued my journey, I’ve adopted different tools and resources to learn more efficiently. However, beyond the tools and resources I've used, I've realized three overall strategies have helped me the most. I've shared these with friends, and maybe they'll help you too.

Find a community
I can’t overemphasize the importance of having the right people around you that have similar goals. There is a quote that says “iron sharpens iron”, and when becoming a software developer, this is even more important.

Attend meetups and network with other developers to keeps your motivation high and stay updated with recent trends.

I found ALC which I regularly attend. In order to find a good meetup for you, check out https://forloop.africa.

Build something
Whenever you learn something new, think about how you can apply it to a real project. This has proven to be useful because it prevents you from entering “tutorials purgatory” where you read a lot of materials, without using them to build an actual project.

Ask for feedback
Ask for feedback and you'll be blown away by how much more you can learn. I wrote code that worked, but it was bloated or lacked important design patterns. This is what actually separates a junior developer from a senior developer.

Having a mentor to review your code and give suggestions on how to improve working code s priceless.

GitHub: https://github.com/osinakayah
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/osinakayah-ifeanyi-91ab61103