Five years? Two years? 5 months? 6 days without sleep with a caffeine infusion on the femur? There are as many possible answers as there are units of time. Let us dare to give a precise answer to a question which is not.
What does knowing how to code mean to you?
Of course, you know what “know how to code” means. And we know it. But your definition may be different from your neighbour’s.
What does knowing how to code mean? How to create a website from scratch? Developing your cousin’s hair salon homepage? Do you manage the intranet of a high traffic website? Be technically advanced enough to entrust a project to another developer? As you can see, the expression “know how to program” is subject to multiple interpretations.
you need the basics
We have just seen that “knowing how to program” can mean many things. Let’s say we decide on a definition. Ex: knowing how to program = being a professional developer. We still need more than that to answer our main question. It would still be necessary to stop at the common prerequisites.
A student who has practiced programming tasks with HTML and CSS for a few weeks will probably finish his learning faster than someone who wonders what “lines of code” are. They start from a different point. The learning time will therefore be significantly different.
Learn to code, yes, but how?
The last parameter to define before answering the question concerns the learning methods. It is not easy to define a single learning time when there are several training solutions, and when these require a differentiated investment on the part of the trainees.
And again, we could also ask the question of support: with or without teachers? With or without students to motivate themselves? With or without educational resources available?
All of these factors will influence the duration of the apprenticeship and lead us to believe that it will be difficult to impose peremptorily a single and unequivocal minimum duration.
From beginner to professional
Even if all students do not have the same abilities and the same intellectual facility, we still observe similarities between each course that lead us to deduce key “stages” of learning.
Having code does not mean being a developer
A little analogy to make us understand: baking bread. On Sunday you have fun making your bread for your greatest pleasure. Would you call yourself a baker because of that? Not. However, a baker makes bread, just like you. But not only. She makes bread, baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, bacon quiches, madeleines and many other delicacies.
But besides that, he is a baker. He has accumulated knowledge from thousands of hours of experience with gluten from morning to night. But he also knows how to manage inventory, customer requirements, product pricing, etc.
Like the job of baker, the job of developer is not limited to the execution of one of its main tasks. A whole set of skills and abilities must be brought together. Knowing how to code is like baking bread. It’s a medium. Whether “simply” to have the pleasure of baking bread on Sundays or to make it a profession. And in the second case, learning takes a little longer.
There are two steps on the long road to becoming a web developer.
The first stage is the discovery and learning of the first languages, and with this first theoretical contribution, the beginnings of know-how. At this stage, the student knows how to “code”. He has technical skills that he knows how to apprehend and whose practical use he knows. What he does not know represents a colossal margin, and the knowledge acquired is still fragile. But he knows how to code. That’s a fact.
It takes at least three months to reach this stage. And even. We are talking about intensive training where we code morning, noon and evening. If you take a pancake break during the day, it slows down the process.
Minimum of five months to become a professional
After three months, if you master HTML and CSS with a little PHP and JS, you still need to be operational in a professional environment. At this level of learning and keeping the same “intensive” pace, it would take another two months to develop what an amateur programmer will miss so much.
If the first three months establish a general technical context, then it is decided to focus on the techno or web development part (front or back, roughly).
Know how
This is what beginners lack. Being a developer is not just about putting lines of code in a text editor. Many students forget that what we call “soft skills” are not soft skills for a developer.
Five months is a low minimum and it seems nearly impossible to claim to be a web developer. But of course you will hear other voices from other schools. Difficult to navigate when the different training organizations may have opposing points of view.
read between the lines
Once you know you need five months, how can you tell the difference?
Your heart. And if your heart knows less than you do, you’re not off the hook. The first thing to do is to contact all these schools in question and ask them about the stated purpose of their training.
The field of training remains a very competitive market. So all the players sharpen their arguments and their best jokes to seduce you. The objective is to know if there is a natural benevolence behind these advertising effects.
Conclusion
After reading all the information above, pick up your keyboard or cell phone and ask, “What am I going to learn during these ‘X’ months of training?” What will I use this course for? Will I register as a developer after training etc. ? Multiply the questions and accumulate the answers and the stories to form a precise opinion. Of course, many indisputable factors coincide with your skills that indicate how long you will need to become an experienced and educated programmer. But ultimately it just depends on your desire when you achieve your goal and success.
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