Ask HN: Is this a good roadmap to be a developer?

Hi, im 31 and I am currently studying a superior degree in development of web apps (in Europe this is equivalent to a Bachelors degree).I will finish it in June 2026. I do have a job now so I am not really in a race to find a job in IT. I'm just switching because I really love technology since I was a kid and I've always been pretty curious about it. I guess I can say I'm following my dreams now (hopefully is not too late).

After hundred of hours looking around for good resources I made a roadmap for myself.

1.- CS50 Harvard. 2.- Java MOOC from Helsinki University. 3.- The Odin Project (only the foundation part) where they teach basics of Linux, Git, Github, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. 4.- fullstackopen from the University of Helsinki. 5.- Learning SpringBoot with Javabrains. 6.- Practice in CodeWars. 7.- Strivers ASZ DSA Course (some1 recommended me this one). 8.- Networking (people I know + LinkedIn). 9.- Mastering text editors. For Java I'll use Netbeans and for the rest, VSCode. 10.- Personal projects. The first 2 I will do a part from the "basic stuff" are: a) A digital ocean droplet running ubuntu. b) An AWS ec2 nano instance.

I live in Europe and I can really move to any country. Optimal thing is to start in Spain where I do live now, but I'm able to move if needed.

Any tip you have for me will be really welcome. I think is really overhelming the amount of tutorials (I think I'm still in tutorial hell and I'm not sure about how to really scape from it), courses etc we have in these nowadays.

Best regards.

What do your teachers say about this? Surely they're aware of the difficulties right now...? It might be a bit too late :(

This story just came out yesterday: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/24/business/computer-coding-...

It sadly reaffirms what many of us have seen anecdotally: the dev labor market has completely crashed and junior devs cannot find jobs anywhere :( Experienced devs are struggling too.

You at least will have a real degree, but even then it's not going to be easy, I don't think.

I fear that by the time you graduate, it will either be quite a bit worse (i.e. AI will have replaced even more of us) or maybe the industry will have reached peak AI (for now) and start hiring humans again. But even then I think a lot of the low-end jobs will not really be just developers anymore but more like "AI shepherds", and there will be far fewer of them. One experienced dev with AI help can now do the jobs of what used to take like 4-6 people.

I really hate to say this, but if I were you (i.e. still in school and young-ish and inexperienced in web dev), I would give up that degree and pivot to something else instead, maybe AI stuff or embedded software or some specialty vertical (e.g. coding for medicine, defense, law, science, academia, etc.).

I think generalist web dev is not going to ever recover to the way it was in the 2000s and 2010s, when boot camps or entry level degrees actually meant something. It's too commoditized now, there's too many of us, too many of us were way overpaid, there's too many still laid off, and AI is too good and only getting better. It is a really bad time to be entering the field and just getting started =/ I'm sorry, man. If I were you I'd really think long and hard about this and look up the career prospects in your part of the world and see if it's a realistic degree anymore. Coding used to be a surefire path to the middle class, but it's not so much anymore.

14 hours agoby solardev

Have you ever built a web site?

If you are bringing up a nano instance on EC2 for instance, you should have the goal that it does something interesting. If you had a choice between taking a course and doing some project that demonstrates mastery, I’d pick the later. Goals like “learning Java” or “learning Linux” are so vague that they are not good guideposts. I would put the personal projects first and then build a plan to get there.

When it comes to text editors you should learn vi, not to write 1000s lines of code in but to fix a busted configuration file on a screwed-up Linux box over ssh at 2pm. You don’t have to be great at it but you need to be able to use it as a notepad replacement.

15 hours agoby PaulHoule