How I Would Learn To Code (If I Could Start Over) 

Please tell me why the hell I would waste time building an android app when EVERY SINGLE job I’ve been rejected from was because I FAILED the whiteboarding portion of the process. Until they stop asking leetcode questions and start asking how many downloads my android app has I completely disagree with your advice. It's like leetcode has now become a dirty word because people dislike it's interview methodology rather than the actual merits in judging someones ability to write efficient clean code

So, should I continue my focus on app development journey instead of worrying about DSA. Having a basic understanding of it is sufficient? At least to get jobs in startups.

@@twrandom3545 the advice is for people just starting out programming (He says it in the video). You don't need leetcode, because you don't even know how to code. Once you are decent enough to publish apps by yourself and are looking for jobs, then yes, leetcode away.

@@AdityaMishra-cj7kt DSA only important if you want to target the big boys like Google or Meta. But, you'll get rejected if you're not from Harvard or Stanford. It's waste of time doing leetcode.

@@AdityaMishra-cj7kt i got into WITCH+ with basic coding abilities. I can solve really basic leetcode DSA and i made it to one of the WITCH+ (wipro infosys consluting etc. accenture)

That's awesome!

Sounds awesome. I envy you

I appreciate that!

Building real things is always better than working on contrived tasks

But there is too much competition on the web, literally, everyone and their mom know MERN stack these days.

@@nirmaljyotibiswas752 😂😂😂🤣

@@nirmaljyotibiswas752 i am learning PHP and SQL and AWS is it correct?? like i obviously know react, css, html .. but no typescript... but i shall start learning typescript and python later after like 10 months

That’s true that’s why the best strategies is to specialize in one stack and it doesn’t gotta be a full stack.

​@@nirmaljyotibiswas752 it's simple, just learn js and either specialise in frontend web (react , next) or backend web (node) or mobile (react native) or desktop ( electron) , don't just Target mern role , for learning purpose you can learn entire mern but become specialist in one of the fields.

yaay Kotlin ftw :)

Let me know if I can help as you go through the Stanford class!

@@RahulPandeyrkp thank you so much!

Either Kotlin or Swift is fine! I'd pick based on whichever language/platform you feel like you can get more help with (for example, if your friends are also learning that language)

whatever takes less time / what your friends are more familiar with (probably XML)

Some bootcamps are worthwhile for sure, but it really depends on the type of person you are. If you need the accountability and don't have an existing peer group around you of developers, bootcamps are great. But if all your friends are SWEs already, you may not need it.

I'm talking to Clement in a live event in August: www.linkedin.com/events/avoidscamswhenapplyingforjobsas7088279155045265408/

I'd start with wherever you have an unfair advantage. Does your local market have a demand for SQL + python devs? If so, I'd pursue that. If you know someone who is a Kotlin/Android developer, use that as an unfair advantage and learn from them.

@@RahulPandeyrkp I'd say that I have a little bit data experience and I have been interviewing for junior data analyst positions. But to be honest becoming a real SWE sounds more interesting and also the pay seems better! However, I can't become a SWE now with 0 experience. But landing a data job seems doable. What do you think?

Decide based on whatever you have higher likelihood of sticking with. This is a combination of what you enjoy more, the people around you, and what the market demands.

In which college you are ?

@@tani564kkk in a gap year currently but will be joining uofregina soon as a freshman

I would love to connect with you , twitter id please?

The answer is contextual. e.g. if you have a name-brand university or a strong referral, having 3 project is more than enough. In fact, you may not even need a bunch of projects. I'd think about projects as more about quality over quantity. If your projects are published and have actual users, that is much more impressive than a bunch of projects that came from just following a tutorial.

@@RahulPandeyrkp thanks! I asked this before joining Taro. The masterclasses are giving me a good guideline on how to approach projects and resumes. I graduated from Bootcamp in 2021 and got nothing so far with my generic React Instagram clone and resume, so I made a switch to mobile development. I need to stand out with a quality Android project published on the play store.

I don't think that's a question worth thinking about. So much of that will depend on who you work with and what their skills are.

usually with the laptop lip closed, but the things I do for RU-vid..

John Doe, for your namesake i highly recommend you take up CS/development

Well then that field will be over saturated so who knows

Compared to becoming a front end or backend work programmer, it is far more difficult to become an AI or ML engineer as it requires you to be being quite good at maths.

Try out mobile development!

From personal experience, Ive tried learning Java first for a few years and struggled a bit. As soon as I switched to Kotlin, because it is "less boilerplate version of Java", everything started making sense. I would say definitely Kotlin, but also dedicate a little bit of time for Java just in case you run into some legacy code.

kotlin!

MacBook Pro

Flutter is interesting. The way I'd evaluate how to build mobile apps actually has nothing to do with the pros/cons technology (at least not when starting out as a developer). A much better way to decide on, say, Flutter vs Kotlin vs React Native, is to pick whatever you'll have less chance of getting stuck. So if you have a friend who knows Dart for Flutter, pick that. If you have a background in Java, pick Kotlin.

@@RahulPandeyrkp Gotcha. Thanks for replying

Mostly just keep doing stuff everyday. I'd write notes if it helps in the short-term, but don't worry too much about creating a "perfect system" to refer back to your notes months from now.

Whatever you have is good enough

Native development (Kotlin, Swift) has staying power and more stability generally.

I'd prefer Java, it will make your eventual transition to Kotlin easier :)

He's focusing on building his company Taro. I highly doubt he has time to build a course.

@@obaid5761oh ok!

I tried, but I'm soo bad at math ! Should I give up on ML & AI ?

FWIW, I got my first internship by writing an Android app. I think the minimum bar is higher than that for a website. And meeting the higher bar is rewarded.

@Andrew Stiles I'd disagree, if you're a beginer applying for internships you want to have the skills to target the majority of jobs which is web dev, not Android. An Android Eng can easily become a web dev and vise versa but a recruiter will toss any resume for an intern with a dif stack.

I certainly have a bias from my own lived experience, but IMO taking the less common path (Android dev vs web dev) has pretty huge advantages.

So do you mean to say that Web is better as compared to Android?

@@aostiles That's great, congratulations! I would love to know more how you did everything in Android since I'm also doing Android Dev right now and I'm a beginner.

If you're prepping for interviews you should definitely use Leetcode to prepare. But it's not a good use of time when you're starting out

I'm thinking of making a video about this!

@@RahulPandeyrkp Looking forward to the video.

I think the opposite -- it'll make junior engineers less relevant to the market, but increase the value of very senior folks

@@RahulPandeyrkp Junior level engineers won't carry the old baggage. They would have adopted to using AI as copilot while in the college. For a company they would cost lot less. Companies will allow them few years to pickup additional engineering skills on the job. This is the current thought process among tech companies. Hence companies are laying off software engineers with 10+ years of experience. Future of engineering organizations will be lean and flat, hence companies will need lot less managers and leads.

​@@RahulPandeyrkp No it won't as seniors will have to come up from somewhere. In many companies senior don't even write code. This is done by medicore devs where junior in most cases are placed to maintain legacy. This single practice is the worst thing to do for devs. As Thyaga mentioned before senior devs are stuck in their mindset and bias in majority of the cases, and then juniors who are getting exposed to crappy legacy code are being trained to think that this is how software development must look like, and since they are junior no one takes their fresh look seriously. I think today is way better option to get to industry as QA and start do automation if you have basic knowledge on programming, than to go to strictly junior dev role where you will spend ages as support and touching code only for fixing some bugs. In my company , we took a QA with some coding knowledge. First of all he had better understanding of whole system and integration with other systems than most of our devs had. Secondly he was coding everyday as he was building framework for automation and integrating it with cd/ci pipeline. After like 6 months he was able two write better code than devs stucked in their box mindset. Bug difference he had experience with testing and from day one was writing test for its own code. I know similar story from few other teams. Simply automation engineers are coding all the time and trying to apply this for solving problems on multiple levels. How to write code to test PDF? How to write piece of code to connect to DB? How to call store procedure after pipeline regression so we can clear data, use the data again for next iteration? Which APIs/ webservices we are using and how we can incorporate these into automation? From day one they are being learn to apply coding to real problems and in most cases they do that to also make their own life and others life easy. Meanwhile juniors are being placed to read documentation and debug years of legacy code.

​@@nieczerwonyplease expound on this QA business...

Trying to learn more here

My drink of choice is hot water :)

Yes, but companies still need people who can read this code. Fireship showcased that chatgpt and bard both spit out code and gave suggestions but it took an experienced dev to troubleshoot it and make it working.

We'll still code, but 10x faster

+ i second this I work at one of the WITCH+ (wipro infosys TCS HCL cognizant ...) and the pay is lower than driving a truck or working as a floor staff at buc-ee's. FAANG and QUANT is only for Harvard students. so normal people like you and me will never make it in.

That is very much not the future and DSA interviews are not going away anytime soon. It's just too good of a filter which can be done st scale, many companies have practical coding for final round applicants though (at the intern level).

Not everyone is in it for the money. Yeah money is good but I love coding because it lets me distribute my code to lots of people all at once.

I'm in FAANG and went to a state school. I thought FAANG was only for Stanford or Harvard kids until years into my career until I went to a Google recruiting event and the guy said I can just sign up online. I failed a couple interviews and landed a job. It's do-able if you have a certain baseline of ability, a good plan (which you should research online) and are committed. There are also other positions outside of just SWE like Data Engineer, TPM, SA, etc. Replying to this, because I would've made a lot more money if I had more self-confidence earlier in my career. Definitely a lot of people aren't cut out for it, but worth checking out Rahul's other interview w/ the Russian tech lead guy who failed like 80+ interviews throughout his career. I think a lot of people don't try hard enough to aim higher and stick with it.

@@tamalchowdhury The money is terrible for coding jobs! Why would I sit in front of my computer for 8 hours a day when I can GET PAID MORE to do other jobs that don't require staring at a computer monitor? The only reason why I continue is because I love the friends I made, but I would have learnt to code if I knew it had such terrible pay.

@@remixisthis I signed up online a billion times. I apply 3 times to Google every 30 days (which is the limit). Every single time I apply, i hear NOTHING back. Just pure silence. Trust me, if I could get into FAANG I would take the job IMMEDIATELY and quit my current job. I am actively applying. Maybe you joined FAANG early like 2015 when it was easy. Now, it's far too competitive and it's only for industry insiders or for those who went to Stanford.

@@Sanyu-Tumusiime I joined 2019. In this climate it’s definitely harder as a lot of places have it on pause, but my opinion still stands in that there are a lot of opportunities out there