How to Self-Assess Your Coding Journey
While learning how to code, the last thing you want to do is delude yourself. You need to be able to make an honest assessment of your skills, after all. Or you could end up majorly embarrassed upon overstating your abilities to the wrong person. Since that’s definitely not what you want, it’s best to learn how to accurately self-assess your coding journey from the start. Here’s how.
Use HackerRank to Solve Problems
Start by assessing your algorithmic skills using HackerRank by InterviewStreet. This innovative platform rolls out the programming challenges, so you can find out exactly where you’re at in your learning journey.
The system starts by sending out ACM-style problems for you to solve. You’ll then move on to AI, machine learning, and so much more, depending on your skill level. All along the way, the system will provide an objective score and even issue badges for your hard work.
Try to move through as many tests as you can over one weekend to get a baseline score. Then, repeat this process whenever you feel like you’ve gained enough new skills to warrant a retry.
Build a Complete Product with UI
After finishing your weekend of coding tests, move on to creating your very own product with UI. You can focus on creating an app, website, or gaming product. Just be sure to focus on getting it up and running properly – and coded well enough for a non-technical person to understand and use.
Start by planning out your concept on paper. Then, sketch out how you want it to look and function. After that, decide which programming language you want to use to get the job done. From there, you just have to start coding to create the product from start to finish.
Just be sure to keep your rubber ducky handy in case you need help debugging your code. Your ducky will prove invaluable whenever you need to get around challenges standing in your way of a finished product.
Complete a Self-Evaluation on Paper
If you’re satisfied with your results from the prior two steps, go ahead and start completing a self-evaluation assessment on paper. To do that, write out all your skills, certificates, and other achievements, including all products made to completion. Don’t forget to add any relevant job experience as well, so you can get a full look at your coding journey to date.
Once you finish doing that, you’ll have a clear map of your coding journey to review. Think about where you might have gaps in your skills or experience. Compare your journey to the greats in your field.
Where can you improve? Upon answering that question, you’ll have a clear path forward to follow. Repeat this process every time you create a new product, finish a full set of tutorials, or hit any other learning milestones.
By the end of these steps, you’ll have a pretty good idea on where you’re at in your coding journey. With that info in mind, you can decide what you need to learn more about, and then get started on doing more tutorials.