Beyond the Syntax: Preparing for a Front-End Engineering Internship

Alright. I've been learning to code since 2018. Terrible, right?

Well, in my defence, my learning journey has been really haphazard. Between 2018 and now, I've taken more breaks from learning to code than you can imagine. So, something like; learn HTML for a couple of weeks, then take a 6-month break, come back to the little CSS you now know for another 1 week, then wait till next year before you finish the Colt Steele's tutorial section. Among other ugly work and interest-related realities.

Anyways, I came back fully this year, and I've been at it for about 4 months. I must say, I'm getting better than when the year started. I mean, now I can read and write some JS code, which I really do find fascinating. I get giddy when a JS code works.

But I know I'm still far off where I ought to be if I'm ever going to get a job in Tech. So, more learning to do before I even bother applying for stuff. However, I want to document this journey. I don't want to wait till I'm a pro at software engineering ('cos I'll eventually become a world-class developer) before I start writing.

The process I'm at right now is called "Preparing for Internship."

I worked on a couple of GitHub and Netlify-worthy projects, but I'm still grossly lacking. And since I'm not technically desperate for a job now, I figure I should prepare myself as much as possible so as to be highly sellable when I start applying by year's end. For context, as of writing this, I don't have a job, except for occasional freelance writing gigs. So, it's weird that I'm not desperate.

Anyways, I'm at a stage where I don't only want to master syntax. I want to understand how these things work, fundamentally. The logic. The systems. The thought process. The system architectures. Etc. The things that make it possible for codes to ship and all. I mean, I just recently discovered that there's something called 'creating a design system with CSS.' This, amongst other concepts I noted, is what I'll be learning for the next few months. Of course, I'll be building projects to practice them.

Weirdly, I just sort of discovered the freecodecamp.org YouTube channel. Well, not that I didn't know they had a channel, I just have not spent time scouring through it to soak in loads of resources on there. It's incredible. Will be buried in there for the rest of the year (and maybe more). As of this writing, I already finished their 'Introduction to Programming' course, and I have a better grasp of what programming is on a broader, higher level - not just the front-end JS. Like the tenets and all - for lack of a better phrase.

Lastly, my friend and podcast co-host, Dhrey, promised to engage me every Saturday - to fine-tune what I know in preparation for applying for stuff. What a friend! Oh, Dhrey is a Senior Front-end Engineer. Fun fact, he started learning in 2018 too.

Ok. enough rambling. I hope this documents what I'm feeling right now. I like that my life in coding right now is beyond burst of motivations. I'm building a habit of coding. When I don't feel like writing code, I'd just keep reading w3schools, take a vertical dive into some non-primary coding stuff, or read an article. I'd always do something related.

I like new things, so I think I'd have an enjoyable coding ride because there's always something new in programming.

Au revior. (Yes, I'm learning French on Duolingo. I've learnt 750 words as of now.)