As I mentioned in my first article, I wanted to write about this subject. I wanted to both tell a little about myself and share some of my experiences. Lets start.

Law School Period

When I entered the top 200 in the university exam in 2016, I did not have many alternatives other than law school as the department to be preferred. I entered Bahçeşehir University Faculty of Law with a full scholarship.

We returned to our homes when covid came out in the 3rd grade. During this period, I realized that I did not want to be a lawyer anymore.

While thinking about what I can do with my own efforts, I started to be interested in software development when I thought that I had been intertwined with technology for years.

First of all, I started to learn c# through the resources I found on the internet, but it was left very sketchy with the intensity of the midterm and final exams. This process went like this until I graduated from university.

After Graduation And Internship

After graduating from law school, I started my law internship like many graduates. In the second semester of my one-year internship, I decided that I definitely did not want to do this job. Being a lawyer was not a profession for me. I decided to learn software development again.

This time, after doing a lot of research, I decided to become a front end developer. Of course, I started learning HTML and CSS first. I took a course from Udemy. I learned a great deal of HTML and CSS from that course.

"You can't learn software development just by watching videos!"

I would also like to point out by the way. You can't learn software development just by watching videos. Probably many people who have tried to learn software realize that this is wrong. The most important thing is to applying what you learn. It would be more correct to act with the logic of make it up as you go along.

Anyway, back to our topic. Later, when I felt that I couldn't get very far with udemy courses, I went to reddit etc. As a result of my research on platforms, I learned about the site called The Odin Project.

The Odin Project

The Odin Project site is the best web development platform I've personally seen. While it's a full stack tutorial from start to finish, the main focus is around HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The training at The Odin Project is very different from conventional software courses. The trainings are completely written and each training ends by teaching the logic of the event by directing it to the documentation or written articles, and giving tasks by saying, "Now do this project" without holding the student's hand.

"Even if the best trainers in the world teach software to a person for hours, even if it is late or long, they cannot teach that person the valuable things that a person will learn while doing the project that he started by saying that I will do it."

You start by making simple websites from the very first lessons and you do not make these websites by writing the codes of the person in the video on your own computer. This has been a completely mind-blowing method for me. Of course, progress can be made by watching videos, I still watch videos when I see it necessary, and watching videos is not wrong, but the real thing that teaches the software development is to implementing it by yourself.

Most of the projects on my github right now are projects I've done through The Odin Project. Every project boasts different things about your JavaScript.

So is The Odin Project enough? It has a clear answer. No it is not. Even if the world's best trainers teach software to a person for hours, even if it is late or long, they cannot teach that person the valuable things that a person will learn while doing the project that he started by saying that I will do it.

After Internship

By the way, my internship is over and I didn't get the license for a long time because I didn't want to be a lawyer. I completely devoted myself to learning software. I have completed most of the tutorials on the website.

The tutorials on the site are finished after teaching React at the introductory level and a few projects. In fact, we can say that it lays a good foundation. But only that much rest is up to you to improve yourself.

Since I realized this, I drew a path for a few months when I was wondering what I could learn. First of all, I decided to make a project with what I learned. I searched the internet for free to use APIs. I looked at the state management libraries I could use. I embarked on a project of my own and completed it within a few weeks.

Applying what you learn immediately is the most important thing that makes it permanent. I've been trying to follow this motto since the moment I started learning software.

Then I decided to learn React frameworks. However, there is something else that I should mention before that.

Game And Application Academy

It is a non-profit academy that provides Unity and Flutter trainings, established within the framework of the cooperation of many organizations, which is only in its second year. Well, if you ask what it has to do with me, yes, I was accepted to the academy last December by being selected as one of 2000 trainees among 35.000 people.

I am taking Dart and Flutter trainings within the scope of this academy, which has enabled me to meet very valuable people and teachers. The trainings are still ongoing. Not only software trainings, but also entrepreneurship and google project management courses are also provided. There are even English courses for programmers.

I also want to say this. The academy is just a platform that guides the individual. It's not a university. As always, it is up to the individual to learn something or not, to improve himself.

What Am I Doing Right Now?

"If software is all the water in the world, the front end is the Pacific Ocean."

I've been spending a few months learning React frameworks and building projects. At the same time, training in the academy continues. In other words, although I do not work at a job, my days are quite busy.

If software is all the water in the world, the front end is the Pacific Ocean. There really is a lot to learn. Next.js, Remix.js, although they have similar logic, there are also many frameworks and libraries such as React in this JavaScript universe.

A new one comes out every day. There are libraries for even the simplest things you can think of. Let's take a look at the React state management libraries, for example:

• Redux
• Jotai
• xState
• Zustand
• mobx

There are many more, the count is endless. Or will you choose ui library. You can choose from dozens of libraries 😅.

Conclusion

"It's like you've beaten the last boss of a game, the game's theme music is playing in the background, the credits are flowing slowly down..."

When I look back at the last year, I sometimes think about what I could have done better. I think I would have started learning much earlier.

I've probably never done anything I've been happier with in my life. There was an etch-a-sketch project at The Odin Project. The first months I started learning JavaScript. I was able to construct the project in a short time as I would do something like this in my head. I may not have gotten that pleasure from anything else before. It's like you've beaten the last boss of a game, the game's theme music is playing in the background, the credits are flowing slowly down...

In conclusion, this is my story in a nutshell. Of course, there are many things that can be explained and I plan to explain it in more detail over time, but I wanted to make an introduction.

See you in the next post 👋.