Back in 2019, I had a long discussion with my husband about my next steps in my career. I have been a music educator by trade, and for the past 5 years have been staying home raising my two young children. Through our conversation I kept coming back to the fact that while I enjoy teaching music, that some part of my mind felt untapped, undeveloped, and unchallenged. I mentioned how there were teaching tools that I created on various available technologies when I was teaching and when I made them I felt such great fulfillment. My husband then suggested that learning to code might be a great way for me to create and develop tools or resources to help other music teachers.
So, like any new coding beginner, I started up "Udemy Hill" and began several free online courses that I forgot to complete in the midst of diapers and online preschool. I then switched to using books and tutorials to help me learn some basics. Along the way discovered FreeCodeCamp and finished the Web Development course (minus a few projects), dabbled in The Odin Project, and built some static sites on the side to practice my new skills.
As I've been learning tidbits here and there, I have felt like there was a piece of my learning missing - the true synthesis of the what, the why, and the how to have really great code. Making mistakes along the way had been helpful, as well as using MDN and Google to figure out problems, but I still felt a disconnect. Most recently, I signed up for the #100devs Free Coding Boot Camp offered by Leon Noel. We are learning full stack development and I couldn't be more excited. Part of our learning will also include developing our own web application!
Leon is a wonderful teacher and if you're curious, you can check out his videos on Twitch or YouTube (LearnWithLeon). I look forward to sharing my progress and can't wait to see where this goes! My end goal is to get a job as a full stack developer!