As a self-taught software developer my journey was not a pleasant one, here is what I learned from this experience and the things I wished people had told me before I decided to go on this path to being a developer.

I regret learning multiple programming languages at once

I wished I had focused only on one language and try to learn it properly rather than jumping from one to another. I have spent several years trying to understand what I wanted to do as an adult and failing miserably at it, i studied a lot of sides on software but without finishing or mastering any skill because as they say: "A master of all jacks is a master of none".

It will take time to get your first job

It will take you more than three months to get your first software developer job, I saw lots of tweets and videos that talk about learning to code in only three months or learn to code and you will get a job in three months

I was so disappointed when I completed more than three months and I was nowhere near getting my first job, I felt like a complete failure, it made my journey much harder than it should, all I'm trying to say is there is an unrealistic length of time that it takes to actually go from having zero knowledge about programming to actually learning how to code, I wish people would be more realistic because personally, my journey took me about more than a year to land my first job as a software developer, I'm not saying it's impossible to learn to code in such short period, many people did that, but it's more likely to take you more than three months and that is completely fine, I wish the first thing people had told me or the first thing I had known before I decided to do this self-taught journey is that it can take a long time or it can take about a year, sometimes, even more, to get a job.

Not having a mentor

This was one of the biggest challenges I had through my journey, it took me so much time to figure out what do I want to do, and before that, I was just going from a technology to another without learning much but the basics, if I had a mentor or if I was on a Bootcamp I would have someone to help me choose a roadmap from the beginning without wasting so much time trying to figure it out on my own.

##Conclusion

I shared mistakes I shamelessly did when I was a self-taught dev newbie. If you are trying to become a self-taught developer, I want you to remember to not rush things and ask other developers to help you. I hope you guys enjoy reading this article I'd love to hear your thoughts below 🥰. Thank you!