What you ACTUALLY need to learn to get a job as a programmer🧑‍💻

I recently posted a short YouTube video on this topic (see below) and thought I’d share a quick summary of what I think is the MINIMUM someone needs to learn to get a job as a (frontend) software engineer. If you or anyone you know is interested in learning to code don’t forget to share it!

1. 🧑‍💻Beginner/intermediate coding ability - Know your if/else’s, for loops, and basic control logic. Know how to work with arrays and objects, error handling, etc.

2. 📤/📥Know how to use APIs. Know how to get data from a 3rd party or from your own server—usually this involves working with JSON. This includes a little about how the internet works and HTTP requests. GET, POST, PUT, DELETE — *bonus if you can build your own API and hit a database to save your data. **bonus2 if you can use an api key to get your data.

3. 💅Styling and positioning - Take the data, display it, and make it look good (like the picture/mock-up). Learn how to put something wherever you want it to go on the screen or app. Learn how to move it 1 or 100 pixels left/right/up/down. Learn how to position something in relation to another item. Learn how to place items on top of or below each other.

4. 💆‍♂️Problem solving and tenacity - You need to be able to solve problems. Solve whatever is in front of you using the tools you have (this includes documentation, asking for help, watching a video tutorial). And you can’t stop until you solve it. Period.

And that’s it. These are THE essentials for getting hired as a junior software engineer (or just making your own stuff!). These 4 things could definitely get you a junior frontend job. And if you know more about servers and databases you could get a junior full stack or even junior backend position. How do I know? Because this is essentially how I got my first software engineering job!

Let me know if you’d add anything to the list!

-Jesse