Who am I and Why Am I Blogging?
Hello, My Name is Rama Komarudin Soemardja and I am a Self-taught Software Developer. I think that blogging is a great medium to share your experiences with other people and it helps formulate your thoughts and gain confidence to communicate your ideas out in the open.
Life Before Software Development
I was always interested in Software Development but gave myself excuses not to go further as a career because of tutorials, financial woes and gatekeeping myself due to how much I had to learn in the process.
The Turning Point
In 2019 I looked at blogs of how some self-taught programmers got started and saw that they followed a trend called #100DaysOfCode. It kept me intrigued with how they were able to progress and enter themselves into the industry without any academics and was compelled to do the same myself but with no luck, I was at my wits when my father had said “I think its time to change careers”.
During My Time in the Global Lockdown in March 2020, I rekindled my passion for development by attending Unity’s online courses and going to the FreeCodeCamp Website as it has lots of applied tutorials and found out that I was more interested in web development and data science than I had initially thought and found myself nostalgic for my dream of being a game developer had reignited.
What I Learned So Far
My journey thus far as a self-taught developer has been filled with achievements and failures from which I have compiled a few takeaways. These are:
1. Start now: There is a never better time to start going into the IT/Tech industry than NOW. Because whether you start by coding as a hobby, going into a Bootcamp or interested in cryptocurrency, the time to make an impact would be now or as soon as possible.
2. Be patient and don’t lose hope: There were moments when I started to engage in learning how to code and understand being a software developer where it felt overwhelming to a point where I gave up or took a “break” due to how impatient I was to get a job. And when looking for work for the industry don’t just give up when they haven’t responded or given you a rejection letter.
3. Don’t compare yourself to others: Another thing you can fall victim to is “imposter syndrome”. I have fallen victim to imposter syndrome by seeing what you have learnt and emulating it because we feel that it is “copying” than it is a method of emulating the work that you have learnt.
4. Be Consistent: Being disciplined and consistent is the key to being better at programming. I would dedicate my time to learning every available day and stick to it, even if it is as low as 10 minutes and I would recommend doing some sort of challenge like the #100DaysOfCode challenge or doing small exercises like open-source documentation or learn from a website like FreeCodeCamp.
Going Forward
There’s still so much I need to learn and do. I am quite hopeful that with hard work and dedication. I will be able to achieve my goals and hopefully, this idea of writing blogs and doing projects can be more consistent with the days going forward and I will create the things that I want to create in the near distant future.
Thank you for reading, I would love to with you in the comments or on Twitter.
Rama Komarudin Soemardja.
Credits
Rsoemardja's Site 
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