What I Did: Before June 2025
I’ll be transparent: I originally considered going back to college for art. As a kid, I was naturally drawn to creative work and less interested in math, so most people in my life still encourage me to pursue art as a career, side hustle, or degree path. But I’ve always had a wide range of interests. And now, as an adult, I get to explore careers I didn’t get to try growing up.
Interested in coding? Now is a great time to learn. There are countless resources — many free or affordable — and it’s easier than ever to get started. If you’re like me and don’t know anyone in tech (besides a rubber duck), or you’re overwhelmed by the learning options, here’s something that worked: ask AI, not for code, but for resources. It helped me filter through noise and find legit learning paths.
Back in 2020, all I knew was I needed something better than minimum wage or gig work. I’d always wanted to learn programming, and I had a grant to attend a community college. I enrolled in a Web Development certificate program during the pandemic. I liked it — but a career advisor convinced me I’d struggle without a degree, and that a CS bachelor's would take me six years due to math prerequisites. Coming from a more artsy background, I’d need to take math one class at a time. That timeline felt impossible, especially at the time.
So I explored other interests, experimented with different side hustles, and learned about entrepreneurship. But I never lost my interest in dev, CS, robotics, and the world of computers.
By June 2025, I was doing okay financially — but still wanted a career, a mission, not just work. So, I applied to an online art school just for fun. But I was disappointed: the tuition was sky-high, study variety was limited, and online networking seemed nonexistent. I also tried to find a local web dev degree — no luck but I found an online CS degree at SNHU with a focus on Software Engineering which was more affordable.
That’s when I asked ChatGPT:
“How can I prepare for this degree? I want to study stats and pre-calc in advance, and get a real intro to CS before going back to school.”
One of the top recommendations?
CS50x: Introduction to Computer Science, by Harvard on edX.
And that’s when everything clicked.
I fell down a surprisingly productive rabbit hole:
- I started relearning math through Khan Academy (amazing and free)
- I started CS50x, and realized: I don’t need to spend years and thousands of dollars on a degree — I can learn computer science online for free.
Even more, I discovered the huge world of dev on YouTube — from tutorials to solo dev vlogs to indie game design. It was kind of like looking up at the stars: inspiring and a vastness to it. There’s not just web dev, but app dev, game dev, product dev — and beyond that, even AI and robotics. It’s one of those things I wish I found out sooner but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Unfortunately, my YouTube feed is now drowning in “get rich with AI" content. That’s not my goal. In fact, CS50 doesn’t even allow outside AI help—more on that later.
YouTube Dev Creators That Inspire Me
- ThinMatrix – makes games using a custom Java engine
- jess::codes – solo dev using Aseprite and Godot
- Shar – inspired me to revive the desktop pet era like it’s 1994
- Nashallery – makes pixel-aesthetic web apps using Electron as a newbie
- Dibyoshree Sarkar – an artist building the game of her dreams in Godot
- ifueko – jailbroke a nearly useless luxury smart mirror to make it functional to her lifestyle
- freeCodeCamp – an excellent resource
- Silicon Valley Girl – I appreciate her interview with the GitHub CEO on why now is the best time to learn to code. It gave me hope!
This all helped me break the belief that I needed a college degree to be a dev. Now I’m focused on building my own solo learning path — going from zero to becoming a solo product developer with room to explore other dev areas.
With some savings, I’ve committed the next year to learning the fundamentals.
What I'm Taking Now (And Why)
- CS50x: Intro to Computer Science (Harvard, edX) This is where I started about three weeks ago. It’s free, highly recommended, and famously challenging. After completing the Mario Less and Mario More problems in Week 2, I found a YouTube video suggesting CS50P as a useful supplement — or even a better starting point.
- CS50P: Intro to Programming with Python (Harvard, edX) A lighter, Python-based intro course taught by the same professor (David Malan). It introduces concepts like VS Code and basic logic. I wish I had known about this one before CS50x — it's like a warm-up to the logic-heavy C content in CS50x. That said, doing both together has been helpful. I usually switch between them when I hit a wall.
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Scrimba’s Front-End Developer Career Path
I explored The Odin Project, Meta’s frontend course on Coursera, and Microsoft’s beginner web dev course — and I picked Scrimba. It’s visual, hands-on, and project-based, which works well for my learning style. I also grabbed a copy of Jon Duckett’s HTML & CSS book, which brought back memories of customizing my MySpace profile back in 2004. Those were good times!
- The Odin Project is excellent and free — just more reading-heavy
- Meta/Coursera has brand recognition but fewer projects and seems like a slower pace
- Scrimba hit the sweet spot for me: visual, flexible, and project-oriented
What Else Interests Me
- React
- Stripe
- Supabase
- Tailwind CSS & Hugo
- Dart & Flutter
- Game dev with Godot, Unity, Blender (and PixSquare)
- APIs & machine learning (eventually)
What Was Hard
Honestly? The mindset.
- Feeling like I need to “cram” a full career shift into a year
- Worrying about burnout or forgetting what I’ve learned
- Wondering if I’m “cut out” for this when I struggle for hours on a problem like Mario Less
- And then… that massive high when I finally solve it
What helps is visualization and identity-based learning — concepts from Atomic Habits that I swear by.
Your brain can’t tell the difference between a vividly imagined future and a real memory. So I picture myself coding confidently, solving bugs like it’s no biggie, and building projects I care about — and weirdly, it works.
Little mental tricks like that keep me going.
Hope > Pessimism
Remember, trust the process.
What I've Completed So Far
I'm currently taking both CS50x and CS50P in parallel. Here's what my progress looks like since June 8th:
Each problem set challenges a different part of my logic and problem-solving skills, and I'm documenting what I learn along the way.