It's scarier this time around. I'm older (early 30s) and leaving my established career field. My background is chemistry. I've worked for 7 years as an analytical chemist in pharmaceuticals....(this includes a year gap where I went back to college to get a Masters in Teaching, but could not find a job as a middle school science teacher afterwards, so I went back into the lab.)
This year, I moved with my partner to the Netherlands from the US. This was a dream fulfilled for us and one we made happen by taking a huge chance: selling everything, quitting jobs, and moving to Germany to find work. Luckily he successfully found a great job in the Netherlands.
I'd like to think I'm a bright, inquisitive, tenacious problem-solving chemist... which hopefully my scientific mindset will transfer over and be beneficial in learning to code.
Here's the things I think I have going in my favor to be successful:
- My partner is a senior level C#/.NET developer who knows front-/backend and middleware. He will be my mentor. Even though he is not familiar with RoR, he knows a lot of other languages, knows how to set up a dev enviro, etc, so he is a resource. He is going to learn RoR along with me so he can help and we can collaborated on projects when I get to that level.
- I can devote a full-time job's level of time commitment to learning. I am not employed.
- I have a background in not only science, but QC. That means I'm used to things having to be done exactly a certain way so that they are credible and analyses go as planned with intended results. I'm used to attention to detail to a ridiculous degree. I am also flexible and adept to troubleshooting and working through problems.
- There are a ton of online resources for training.
- There is a RailsGirls meetup group in nearby Utrecht, NL. There is a frontend meetup group in Amsterdam, NL. Both of these cities aren't too far by train. The meetings are in English too.
I am starting this blog on the advice in the posts of Josh Kemp who was able to go from beginner to a full-time, employed RoR developer in ~9 months. I am mainly blogging to hold myself accountable, rather than for self-promotion at this point.
My goal (7 months?) is to become proficient enough I can find an paid internship or junior level position. I want to learn RoR and HTML/CSS.
Here's my gameplan for the rest of November...
- Finish the Computer Sciences Circles intro to programming/Python course. I started this course a day ago, when I was looking into the 1-yr BS degree in CS from OSU and they recommended trying it out. I want to finish since I've started. I'm on exercise 7C currently.
- Set up my development environment for RoR with the help of my mentor.
- Read Zed Shaw’s "Learn the Command Line the Hard Way"
- Pick one of these courses and start it:
Back to studying....
