From coding newbie to Front End Developer in 9 months

A few months ago I went to a coding meetup in Edinburgh, Scotland where I live and met Josh Carvel, who at the time said he was taking some time out to learn coding from scratch. When I saw him a couple of months later he had found himself a job as a Front End Developer and so had been successful in his mission! I talked to him about teaching himself to code, what he is working on and tips for how to learn Javascript.

I saw that you had got your first software developer job after a few months of self-learning. Can you tell me a little about the role?

I'm a front-end developer at Annotate Software, who basically provide a digital workplace for managing and collaborating on documents. I'm working on a brand new codebase which will be replacing the old product. The front end is using React, which I've been using for quite a while, with TypeScript, which I'm learning on the job. I'm also branching out into the backend, which I haven't done before, by learning Java, Spring Boot and MongoDB.

What advice would you give a newbie?

There’s a lot I could say, including everything I’ve put out on my Twitter where I post about self-teaching. But if I had to say just a few things, it would be take your time, don’t sacrifice your mental or physical health, and always try to be positive about yourself and your potential – the process is very messy, just keep at it until you succeed.