SmartCoding (SC): Being a developer is challenging. What made you interested in this field?
Bojana (B): I wanted to change my career – I was an English teacher at that time, but I was always interested in technology so I decided to try out technology as a hobby and then realised how interesting it is.
SC: A lot of developers have a linguistic background. Do you feel like it helped you to become good at what you’re doing?
B: It certainly did. Programming is a language in itself so if you understand the correlation between syntax and other things then it’s so much easier to programme.
SC: As you studied at Junior Full-Stack Developer course, I assume you have some previous experience with programming. Could you tell us about that?
B: I’ve been studying by myself – first tried that as a hobby with easy things like HTML, and then I realised that there is actually a lot of places on the internet where you can learn. I’ve started with some free courses and then decided to take the ones that you pay for, which were so much better. And after that, I joined SmartCoding. I am 30 years old and I didn’t want to go back to school, but I realised that without any formal education finding the first job by myself would be very difficult. It’s only 3 months and it teaches exactly what I wanted, so it was a great opportunity.
SC: What have you learnt so far?
B: Working on the real project was great – I was working at home mostly on small things, so I never had a chance to collaborate with a team. We’ve learnt Scrum which was very useful, also how to organize your work with Trello, how to communicate in tech, how to follow instructions and what they actually mean, and to be extremely flexible depending on the needs.
SC: Was it easy to manage your time and learning process?
B: Far from easy! The biggest challenge wasn’t learning itself, but figuring out what I needed to study and how to fit this knowledge in. I am not the type of person who absorbs a lot of knowledge during the classes, so I spent a lot of time at home studying by myself and brainstorming with other students. I usually wake up in the morning and study half a day and then come to the classes and discuss my progress.
SC: What is your dream job after the course?
B: I like NGOs. I tend to do impactful things. I could have a job that just pays bills, but if I could find something I love, that would be a dream scenario. I was for example impressed by a company called Karma. I’d like to stick to Front-end.
SC: Any tips for future students?
B: I take notes – I don’t study by heart. Invest a lot of time studying theory – then you’ll understand what you’re doing better. Ask a lot of questions and try to catch up.
Bojana
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