I made my first commit to a real project in June 2021 and started my first developer job in March 2022. Nine months of dedicated learning. No CS degree. No bootcamp. Here's what I did and, more importantly, what I would do differently if I were starting now.

The Context

I was 28, working in marketing for a SaaS company, and had been dabbling with code for about a year. I decided in June 2021 to take it seriously. I set aside two hours every morning before work and three hours on weekend mornings. That's roughly 70 hours a month for nine months. Not a full-time pace, but consistent.

What I Learned (And the Order)

HTML/CSS for the first six weeks, just enough to build basic static pages. Then JavaScript — not a library, plain JavaScript — for about three months. The fundamentals of programming: variables, loops, functions, arrays, objects, DOM manipulation. Then React, then Node.js and basic Express.

I deliberately didn't touch frameworks until I understood the underlying language. Developers I've spoken to who learned jQuery before JavaScript, or React before JavaScript, consistently struggle more with debugging and understanding errors. The foundation matters.

The Portfolio That Actually Worked

I had three projects when I started applying. Not ten half-finished projects. Three complete ones:

  • A personal expense tracker with a React frontend and Node.js backend, deployed on Heroku with a real PostgreSQL database
  • A public API I'd built that returned structured data (a small dataset I found interesting), with documentation
  • A contribution to an open source project (three small bug fixes to a popular npm utility)

The quality of each project was more important than the quantity. I built each one beyond "tutorial finished" to "I actually use this" and wrote a proper README explaining the technical decisions I'd made and why.

The Applications

I applied to 47 positions. Got 11 phone screens. Got 7 technical interviews. Got 2 offers. I took the one that paid slightly less because the team seemed better (correct decision in hindsight).

The applications that performed best were ones where I tailored the cover letter to a specific technical problem the company was working on that I'd identified from their engineering blog or job description.

What I Would Do Differently Now in 2026

Learn to use AI tools well from day one. Not as a shortcut — as a skill. Developers who effectively use Claude or Copilot to accelerate their work are more productive than those who don't, and demonstrating that skill matters in interviews now in a way it didn't in 2022. I'd also spend more time on system design basics earlier — these come up even in junior interviews and are easier to learn before you've developed bad habits.