I have read so many stories of self-taught developers and to be honest, the idea of self-learning and not having to answer to anyone or authority is what drove me to learn about web developing and programming in general, and also for the fact that with a lot of hard work, dedication and commitment anyone can learn and change career into tech irrespective of their background and age.

This reason, along with my love for creativity and problem-solving is why I decided to self-learn. However, the reason for this post is about how I tried so many times to self-learn coding online, failed, and also to explain the benefit of boot camps.

I always gave up so easily but I didn't know why until I recently joined an on-campus Bootcamp in February 2020 - a Full Stack Developer Course. I was able to complete the first level of the course which include HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, and jQuery and then COVID-19 happened and turned all our lives upside down. The course was moved online but I couldn't keep up - I was doing so well before Covid-19, so what happened?

After the COVID-19 cases had gone down here in South Africa we were allowed back on campus under full compliance with every new Covid-19 rule and regulation and I was so happy to resume back my full-stack web development course. I have since then finished, completed all my tasks, and earned a full stack developer certificate from Hyperion

I completed the Responsive Web Design course on FreeCodeCamp and started the JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures just to continue on my learning process. I have also earned a certificate from google skills for Africa and much more, Note that everything I listed above is all online courses, Bootcamp made it easy for me, I couldn’t finish a course online a few months ago and now I have a few under my belt all because of what I learned from coding Bootcamp the structure and foundation it gave me

This blog post is for people who are struggling with learning virtually and couldn't commit to the process. Joining a Bootcamp is a good way to get into learning programming because it will give you structure and most importantly you will have the opportunity to grapple with real-life examples as tasks with a mentor or lecturer to grade your tasks and coding exercise and help whenever you have difficulty solving a problem.

My unsolicited advice to anyone who is thinking of going into web development or software engineering is to take Google`s fundamentals of digital marketing because it elucidates how the internet works. I have done it and it was a really good experience for me. Moreover, document everything you are learning