When I was considering a career as an app developer, there were a lot of different things to consider. In this day and age, there are a ton of ads promoting those jobs and careers. We wanted to give you some very useful tips to make your journey easier.
1. Why Do You Want to Do It?
This is the question to ask when choosing any career, especially if you don’t have experience in the field. In order to succeed, you will need to know why you’re doing it and use that as inspiration. There will be tough moments in your journey, and you should have something to keep you on the right path. A good friend and mentor could play this role even if you don’t know why you’re doing it.
2. Choosing Your Path
When you want to be a software developer, you’ll have so many different options to choose from. For this very reason, it’s important to do some research before you decide which route you want to take. There’s a ton of career paths for a software developer and each one is fun, unique and interesting in their own way.
Maybe developing websites suit you better. Whatever path you choose, the positive side is that every programming language has similar principles. If you learn one programming language, it won’t be hard to learn the new one later on.
If you really want to develop mobile apps, do you want to create android or iOS apps? There are so many different roads that you can take, which is both the positive and negative side of the job. You don’t have to dwell on it too much when starting your training journey. There will be enough time to do it later on.
3. Imagination vs. Reality of the Job
When it comes to most jobs, imagination is quite often different from reality. It would be a good idea to find as much as possible about how every day, week, month of your future job really looks like. After that, you can decide with more confidence if this career is for you.
The positive side is there are plenty of videos, blogs, and forum posts online to learn from. You can also reach out to an academic help company that can help you get the grip of day-to-day life as an app developer before you dive into education head first.
Image source: Lynda
4. Learning is Not Hard
It’s really easy to find high-quality training material if you’re learning to become a software developer. Actually, it’s easiest to find training material for software development related careers. Those courses are not expensive either. If you need help, you can ask it online, and there will always be someone willing to help you resolve your problem.
5. Practice Makes Perfect
When learning online tutorials, there is a hidden danger lurking in the background. If you only repeat after someone, you will gain some understanding, but you will not know how to do it on your own. For this reason, you have to protect yourself from the never-ending tutorials-loop. Make sure to create your own projects!
6. Be Ready for Lifetime Learning
This job is unique in this special request, where you have to always learn new technologies in order to stay updated with the industry. Just the same as you’ll have to update your apps from time to time, you have to update your knowledge as well.
Image source: BuildFire
Sometimes your favorite framework will become non-usable. The good thing, again, is that principles always remain the same. You can always transfer your knowledge to new technologies.
7. You Have to Learn Different Apps and Technologies
As you will find out later, most apps require different technologies, languages, or frameworks to work in order. That’s why it will be required for you to understand them. The more you know, the better it is for you. You don’t have to overload yourself at the start of your training; this will be your next phase.
8. Understand Yourself
Many people don’t start coding not only because it’s too hard for them but because of psychological requirements as well. This job is not for everyone. For this reason, knowing why you want to do it is very important.
On top of that, you should analyze yourself and your habits as well. Can you sit in front of a computer for a long time? Do you have the patience to analyze some problems for a very long time? Do you go mad if you can’t resolve the problem on the first try?
9. Time is Your Most Important Asset
When training, you will find out that most courses are not expensive. Everything you need to learn is not expensive, starting with equipment all the way to courses. Of course, you can buy expensive equipment and enroll in high-end courses, but it’s not recommended when you’re just starting.
The best is to practice on your own first. You will understand everything much better after 6 months or a year and then you can make important decisions. The most important investment is time. You have to sit, watch tutorials, and code.
In our modern age, it is really easy to start this journey. When the supply of information is so high, you have to be cautious about where and how much you’re spending your time.
10. Just Start
This is the most important piece of advice when it comes to coding. Considering that you can start even without any money, you should remember this step as the most important one. Every week you will make progress, and your knowledge will expand equally. With this, you will have more questions as well. These questions will become better and better with each day.
Try to make it fun and interesting, as much as you can. Do not overload yourself! Start with small projects first and then make them a bit more difficult every week or month. Baby steps are a great way to progress through the endless seas of development knowledge.
The two most important things you should avoid are: (1) the tutorial loop and; (2) overloading yourself.
Most importantly, Don’t Quit!
Author’s Bio. Jessica Fender is a copywriter and blogger at GetGoodGrade with a background in marketing and sales. She enjoys sharing her experience with like-minded professionals who aim to provide customers with high-quality services.