Phil Choi left teaching to become a senior developer after 30, learning through a three-month bootcamp and late-night self-study without a CS degree. He built real apps in real estate, e-commerce, and social platforms, betting on himself financially to make the switch.
Chapters
I became a senior developer after I hit 30 years old. I don't have a college degree in CS and I was teaching English at the time, but I couldn't see myself being 40 years old and teaching young kids ESL. At first I thought I wouldn't be able to learn a new skill like coding because I thought I was too old. I was scared to fail, but it's scarier not trying. So the way I learned how to code was I went here and there looking things up on the Internet. But I found myself going to a boot camp. And the boot camp experience was really good for me. Actually, it was pretty expensive. I needed to, you know, make a huge investment on myself. The skills I learned at the Bootcamp were very basic, just JavaScript, HTML, CSS and PHP and MySQL it was a three month course. I learned a lot of the basics and fundamentals. Would I say it's worth it? Yes. But there's only so much that you can learn in three months. Close the gap between me and new computer science degree students and the younger wave developers coming in. I really use network as a way to kind of body up a lot of these CEOs or companies, people that could get me a job at a company. And I think networking was very important for me. And at the time I was partying a lot and, you know, trying to have fun being young. I closed the gap by just, you know, even if I go and network and party, I'd come home and I'd try to learn something new. I'd stay up really late, stay up all night sometimes want to learn. Another way I closed the gap was I had a couple programmer, senior programmer friends around me that I used to party with and I just ask a bunch of questions and I'd probably be that annoying person that kept asking, how do I do this? How do I do this? But in the end they just told me, oh, dude, just Google it. So I googled it and I read about it and I looked at the documentation. The skills that I needed to learn to close the gap were just the fundamentals, I think the fundamentals and obviously trending technologies like JavaScript, frameworks like Vue and React, you know, I bet on myself a lot and I, I went to a boot camp, it was expensive and I didn't have much savings and I wasn't in the best living situation. But I bet on myself, I took that money, I ran, and I didn't look back with an attitude like, you won't give up and you bet on yourself, there's no losing. Learning to code is difficult, but just because it's difficult doesn't mean you shouldn't pursue it. 2024 the state of coding is. It seems like a lot of junior developers are positions are being taken away by AI. There's confusion on whether you should do it or not. But if you want to be a problem solver and you want to sit in front of computer and you, and you see yourself doing that and being able to fight with the computer and not give up until you find a solution, coding is okay for you. And there's a lot of fulfillment that comes with programming. It makes you feel good. You know, if you're working on a problem all day and you figure it out, I think there's no better feeling. I've definitely been there, stayed up all night trying to figure something out. I mean, I've built a couple apps now at a couple companies, a real estate value report company, a kickboard company, a journaling application for mental health, some other social networking platform, e commerce. It's all very fulfilling. And once you finish, there's nothing better. No better feeling that you can get. Trust me. I really want to say something and it's if I can do it, you can do it too.
