Learned to program over the past year - now what?

I am a qa software tester who for the longest time knew nothing about programming (you don't need to program to be a tester).

A year and a half ago I decided that it was not good to be so ignorant of what the developers do around me every day, so I buckled down and learned a bit about programming.

Since then I have earned a web dev certification, am writing small applications in HTML and C# at work to automate parts of my testing job, and have written a couple of games in Javascript/React/CSS/HTML5 in my free time.

The problem/question I have is what should I do now at this point with this new found skill? I am already applying these new skills at my job, but that is not enough because most of my job is still non-programming related. I am casting about for what to do on the weekends to keep going with this computer thing.

Should I keep going just writing games on the side. If so, what platforms or technologies should I try out?

Should I be exploring something else entirely (someone has suggested messing around with nodejs).

My interests are embryonic at this point. Switching languages is not a serious problem.

a reply to: olddognewtricks

Why don't you try moving into App development ? It's easy enough to get SDK for Android to play around in and you could possibly earn some money from it if you make decent apps people will pay money for or even look for freelance work for stuff you can do at the weekend ?

Java, WebGL, Android SDK, Android NDK, C++ would be the next steps.

a reply to: olddognewtricks

Is you present employer aware of your self-development? If not let them know what you are doing, how it has improved your utility on your current job and your desire to increase your knowledge and value to the company. If the company is in any way 'old school' run, they will encourage and reward your continuing efforts and may even pay for more education in programing. I learned to program back in the day on the company dime and time.... things are a bit different now but there are good companies out there.

Education is never a waste.

a reply to: olddognewtricks

Build yourself a couple of simple but unique Wordpress themes and get them accepted into their theme gallery. Then extend those themes into premium themes and build promotional websites to go along with each of them. Use React or Vue.js in your promotional sites and play around with some other libraries like ScrollMagic and GSAP.

By then you should be able to put together a decent portfolio with your themes and games and land a job as a front-end developer pretty easily, or you'd be in a decent position to hustle up your own work if that's the route you want to go.

Use Github religiously from the start btw.

a reply to: olddognewtricks

Take classes in psychology, philosophy, and the arts. The more interesting and complex you are a human being the more people will be interested in having you around.

Dude join a cryptocurrency dev team and strike it rich. Seriously - i know people here bag on bitcoin but blockchain tech is the future. Stratis is coded in C#. Look them up online, join their slack group, and ask in the C# dev channel if they need any work donebwith anything. A 700$ investment in Stratis in September of last year would now be worth upwards of 100k. They need dapps developed using their platform.

dfnj2015... that is HORRIBLE advice.

I would say if you want to stay in QA (or maybe go up a level) look into automation. Esp Selenium, which I believe has C# bindincgs. Android Java and iOS Swift are good industries to look into as well. Same with JS, Node, React, Angular, WebGL. Also, SASS, Ruby, Pyth0n, are big, Ansible is big with automated QA (in pyth0n).

I'd say try to keep one focus, but also expose yourself to many as different languages as you can. Really try to perfect one skill once you know what piques your interest.

Overall, I'd say practice practice practice. Try Codewars.com, codecademy.com, these are good learning tools for practice. Go on amazon and pick coding textbooks that interest you. Honestly there is no way you've 'learned programming' in a year. I'm a few years in the coding industry and I'm still not even an expert.

Once you know what you're doing, build out a portfolio. Buy a domain (firstnamelastname.com) and build a little blog to show off samples, link it to github, make your own tutorials, etc. You can also use upwork.com to freelance. Then you can practice interview questions and start applying to full time roles.

I was doing QA, specifically Automated QA and I recently transitioned into development roles. It takes a lot of time, skill, patience and I wouldn't start marketing yourself as a dev yet without 100% confidence in what you are doing. The pressure can be really intense, especially when you hit a roadblock. Experience is key with that. Best of luck!

Best move I've seen for novice programmers is to find a few people with an idea and found a company.
Not done start up, looking to sell out... A real company.

Figure out what businesses need, and offer it. I suggest banks, or hospitals as targets. That have unlimited funding and strict IT related regulations, imposed by beurocratic idiots who don't know how computers work.

Make a service, not a product. Something they pay you to do month after month, year after year.

20 years in, if you make it and the economy does too, you'll have more dollars than sense and want nothing more than to disappear into the woods and live off sunlight and berries.


Shouldn't have invested time in programming- there's no joy coming to that field.

go for C/C++.

a reply to: Attentionwandered

Yes, certainly I haven't mastered programming by any stretch of the imagination! I simply meant to say there was a transition from knowing basically nothing about programming to using programming to build tools that solve real-world problems.

This is sound advice you give about QA. I have found that in life it is best quite often just do what is right in front of you. That is why I started coding to begin with - I was already sitting in front of a computer all day and was hearing a lot about the whole automation world. Programming was just something that was right in front of me.

originally posted by: dfnj2015
a reply to: olddognewtricks

Take classes in psychology, philosophy, and the arts. The more interesting and complex you are a human being the more people will be interested in having you around.

So what's your excuse?

Yeah, finding your way on programming is not that easy, and many people end up bored as hell and just go to do other things.

The really interesting programming skills are not that easy to learn, too.