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11 Months as a Self-Taught Developer – What Have I Learned?

Theodora Cristea on August 03, 2025

Hello everyone!🥰 I haven’t been in this community for long, so like any newcomer, I wasn’t sure exactly what to share in my first posts. There’s so...
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Alexandru Ene

It seems we are on the same path! I've been into development for 11 months too! :) As I was reading your post, I could remember all the same struggles you've been through, because I faced them myself. I really enjoyed reading your post! It's honest and motivating! Never stop what you are doing now, the future is yours.

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Theodora Cristea

I'm so glad to hear that!🥰🤗 I can see you've gone through the same struggles as I have🥰. But you're not alone, we're here to share our stories with each other and to understand that we're not the only ones. We all go through these difficulties in the beginning. You're not alone on this path. Take it one year at a time and keep going!
Be persistent and stay the course. You're already doing the right thing.
Thanks for your time, see you around!🥰

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Shreelaxmi Hegde • Edited

Grateful you shared this🙌
I truly enjoyed reading your story. It’s so inspiring to see how you kept going despite the struggles and self-doubt.

Sometimes, choosing not to listen to that inner voice telling us to quit is the best thing we can do. That discomfort often leads to the strongest growth. Keep going! 😀

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you for your message.🥰 I'm glad you enjoyed my story.🤗
And yes, that inner voice often needs to be listened to. When it expresses fear, it reflects self-doubt. But when it pushes you to take a step forward, it shows confidence in what you're doing it means you're sure of yourself and satisfied with your path. Thanks for your time. Keep going!

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Viorel Mocanu

Perseverance and a clear vision of what you like to do and how to grow (at least from a technical standpoint) are the key to making this work.

The job market is tougher than it's been for 15 years (before that there were moments when it was even tougher), but if you can get to a point where mastering a few technologies allows you to begin solving real world problems, you're in the right place. Showcasing those problem solving skills via GitHub projects that recruiters and hiring managers can actually test out or experience for themselves WILL land you jobs – now and in the future.

Best of luck and never stop learning!

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Theodora Cristea • Edited

Perseverance and enjoying what you do will take you far, not just technically, but also practically. Work becomes easier when you're not forcing yourself, when you're drawn to what you're doing, and when you do it with passion... everything becomes easier.🥰

If we did the opposite and gave up, both technically and practically, everything would become harder... your progress wouldn’t be the same as it is now.

Unfortunately, yes, the job market has become more difficult and continues to get harder each year, mainly because technology is advancing so quickly. But that's exactly why those who know they’ve chosen this path understand that it won’t be easy. Personally, I like it because there’s no monotony or boredom compared to other jobs... I think you know what I mean. That’s one of the reasons I enjoy development, YOU NEVER GET BORED 🙃 In many jobs, you advance until a promotion, and with time, you start to feel bored, especially if you aspire toward perfection... Thank you for your message and for the encouragement. See you around!🥰🤗 Keep going!

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Madina Bolat

wonderful post, I can relate to many parts. One question - did you have any anxiety around AI while learning the basics from scratch?
I had this (and still have sometime) when I am learning - like "look at me, learning this basic stuff while AI is moving exponentially and you could build entire systems with a few prompts". Felt a bit discouraged as if I am trying to plough the fields with a hoe when people already use tractors and advanced tools.
I know this is all in my head but curious if you had similar anxiety and how you dealt with it.

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Theodora Cristea

Hey, I really like your question... 🙃
One day I opened Messenger on my phone and saw they had introduced artificial intelligence in the app so you could talk to it, and I started asking it about different topics. You might not believe it, but up until about 2 months ago (Maybe they had introduced for a longer time, but I didn’t realize it I’m not really active on social media) , I had never used AI at all , literally for nothing.

Up to 9 months into this development journey, I had learned everything from scratch, with no help at all. I created my own learning plans, exactly as I mentioned earlier. In the beginning, when I was trying to learn, I didn’t even like watching YouTube tutorials because I felt overwhelmed by the massive amount of information. Like I said before, it felt like an endless loop of tutorials that made you feel powerless, way behind, and like everything was just impossible. 😂 It kind of feels the same with AI sometimes, when you ask it something, it replies with things like “Do you also want to know about this…?” or “If you’d like, I can teach you that too…” and it just keeps going endlessly! 😂

So I started learning from the W3Schools website. Everything was organized and nicely presented, and it showed your progress, which made you feel like you were actually improving. I learned a lot from there.

I know I’ve gone a bit off-topic from your question, but I’ve always chosen to be honest with myself and to repeat what I learned from a lesson or a vide, not just copy and say, “Alright, I learned something new!”

Because if you truly want to become a developer, where do you think you'll get if you're just using a “tractor”, which is faster and looks cleaner on the surface, when you don’t even know how to use a shovel? It’s harder to dig with a shovel and maybe it doesn’t look as nice, but at least, compared to the person driving the tractor, you know how to work with it... if that makes sense. 😂

It’s like in school, when you cheat on a test, but you don’t remember anything afterward, when you could’ve just studied and actually gained real knowledge.

So in these last two months, I’ve never asked AI to just give me ready-made code to copy, and that’s because I like to understand what I’m using in my code. I want to understand the logic, to ask myself why it was written that way… why something is used in a certain way…?

I don’t like to lie to myself, because if I were to constantly ask AI for ready-made code or full projects, what would I really be learning? How fair would I be to myself? Would I end the day feeling proud that I used my own brain? I don’t think so.

I’m a very detail-oriented person (sometimes maybe too detail-oriented...😂) and I really like that, when I learn something new, I can ask AI about the parts I don’t understand, like the syntax or how something can be used in other ways. I ask it questions like it's a mentor. But I don’t trust it 100%. Sometimes I open several chats with it and ask the same question to see if I get different answers, and since it’s a robot, it does make mistakes. I’ve even corrected it a few times.

So no, I’ve never felt the need to turn to AI for code. I use it as a tool for additional information. 🤗That’s exactly why I didn’t mention it in my story, because it wasn’t part of it at all. Everything I’ve learned, I learned from the internet, from MDN and other websites.
Thanks again for your question! 🥰🤗 Keep going. Thank you!🥰

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Madina Bolat

wow, you are so inspiring!! Thanks for such a detailed response, appreciate it. And you motivated to learn conscientiously without relying on AI all the time.
Your dedication and discipline inspired me, thank you!
All the best in your journey! 🥰

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Madina Bolat

also so relate to what you said about AI keep asking "do you want to know this? this? or this?"
and it is like a never ending chain of question answers coming at lightning speed and feeling overwhelmed unless you deliberately stop and digest what you just learned.
you are very disciplined in just sticking to one source!

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Theodora Cristea

Exactly, ideally you'd stop and try not to automatically turn on your blinding spotlight of information. As I said, I use AI as an extra source of information, not to have it write the code entirely for me.
I'm glad my story helped you.
Thanks for your time, see you around, keep it up!🥰

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Accio by Alibaba Group

What a refreshingly honest account of the self-taught journey! Your perspective on balancing fundamentals with progress – rather than chasing perfection – is wisdom every new developer needs to hear. That transition from struggling with basic syntax to building React projects in under a year is truly impressive.

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you for your comment.🥰 We should strive for perfection, but also remain realistic. As I said, if you were to rely on perfect language learning alone, it would mean getting stuck and sinking into just one language. That’s why curiosity pushed me further...
Thank you for your time.🤗

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Prashant

Thanks for sharing your insightful journey with us, I've also gone through the same things.

And the text "Work with yourself, not against yourself.🥰
Learn to enjoy the journey, not just chase the destination.🤗
As always, feel free to share your thoughts, your feedback means a lot to me. Thank you for reading, see you around!🥰🤗" is really insightful and motivating.

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you so much. I'm happy you find my post motivating!🥰 See you around.🤗

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sahra 💫

Nice read! An interesting guide for beginner developers.

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you for your time! 🥰Happy to hear you found my post interesting. See you around.🤗

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Olena Bukhova

Thank you for sharing your experience, for me these are words of support.

When you study on your own - something can knock you out of your routine and you haven't learned anything new for a week and you start thinking «I can't sit down to study, maybe it's not for me».
But you just need to take the first step - re-organize your studies, specific tasks and the brain becomes interesting again and I feel like I'm on track.

I remind myself of the words that the one who doesn't give up achieves his goals.

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you for your time.🥰 I'm glad my story encouraged you. It's true, doubts start to appear and can be discouraging, especially when you feel mentally unorganized.
I completely agree with you, and you're right, the fact that you keep going and make small steps forward, no matter how small, really matters. Every bit of progress and every internal struggle brings you closer to your goals. Keep going with everything you're doing.🤗

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Gabriel Ibe

The only person that knows everything about CSS doesn't exist😅

Cuz like even the head of the team managing the language mightn't even know more than 60% of what actually goes on in CSS. Even the team members might most likely be divided into group for more specialization so it's normal not to finish CSS cuz I didn't 😅

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Theodora Cristea

Exactly, I'm glad you agree with me, languages are written by teams made up of many people... We can't force our brains to learn a language that was developed by hundreds of minds working together...😊 That's exactly why I was saying that development is vast and it's a lifelong journey... not something that takes just 1- 2 years. You'll constantly run into new things. Thanks for your message.🥰 Keep going!

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Gary Xia

Great article! I finished my first excercise on freeCodeCamp last October, so it's been about 11 months for me too. Can't count the times I felt like giving up. And the YouTube 'gurus'/course-sellers make it seem so easy. Couldn't agree more with what you said about learning to "enjoy the journey" and "trust[ing] the process". Hope you keep going and never look back!

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Theodora Cristea

I'm happy to hear that!🥰 I believe you went through the same problems... How I sed:
Be consistent. You have to prove to yourself that you can, step by step. 🥰 Learn from your mistakes. Stop giving power to that inner voice. Become whole, strong. Learn from failures and trust the process❗Look back just for your progress... Keep going! See you around!
Thank you for your time.🤗

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Stefan Moore

You said exactly what I'm thinking. Glad to know that their are others in the boat.

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you for your comment.🥰 You’re not the only one, the boat is big enough for all of us... Keep going!🤗

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t_ostder • Edited

kuddos! Even I am a newbie in tech. Went from a mech engineering fresher to working as an backend dev at a startup. Thinking of sharing my thouhts thorugh a blog too. You inspired me here. Wish you the best for your future!

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you.🥰 I’m glad to hear that, congratulations to you as well.
Share your story with us, many are waiting for it.
Much success further in everything you do.🥰 We’ll hear from each other around.

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sheep

consistency beats talent. Good luck!

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Theodora Cristea

You're absolutely right. Thank you very much, good luck to you too.🤗

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Mugisa Jackson

Waooo, so amazing. Great and inspirational

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ArshTechPro

Its good, it worked for u

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you! 😊

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Parag Nandy Roy

Love how you turned self-doubt into self-growth...

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you so much! 🤗

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Aad Pouw

Where nobody talks about, is this.
Make mistakes, because from that you learn the most!

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you! I totally agree with You.🥰 I can say that, sometimes I've learned so much more from what went wrong than from what went right.🙃 It's all part of the process...They show us which way to go next.

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Romily Robles

Thank you for all your words.

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you!🤗

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Stephanie

Consistency pays off! :)

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Theodora Cristea

Exactly! Thank you.🤗

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Harsh

So true

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Theodora Cristea

Thank you! 😊