10,000 hours…?

How long to reach somewhere substantial?

Malcolm Gladwell (and other writers, some of them with scholarly aptitude) estimate that 10,000 hours of learning puts you on par with true masters in most, if not all fields. Talent may be important,…


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Sebastian Stüwe

How long to reach somewhere substantial?

Malcolm Gladwell (and other writers, some of them with scholarly aptitude) estimate that 10,000 hours of learning puts you on par with true masters in most, if not all fields. Talent may be important, too - especially when it comes to the last 1%. I'd say, previous experience helps as well.

The implicit question

I assume that only very few jobs require full mastery of coding concepts and related subjects. Yet, I have no idea how many honest hours of work are required to reach to a solid entry level.

The idea

This is a social experiment with n=1. As such, it is hardly any proof, but might give some guiding clues as to what efforts are required. I am going to keep track of all my activities and time spent becoming a coder. Until I give up or survive on my projects!

The challenge

My time stretches between family, work, garden and learning. I wouldn't wanna miss out on most if not all - so understanding how much time I spend on learning can quickly become fuzzy and - in hindsight - not very useful to know and tell. I'll try to recap my learning time and list it here on a weekly basis, to get a better understanding of the idea of "developer in a year". I (re-)started coding on March 31, 2021. Never thought about publishing anything, so the first 25 days are lost to oblivion - what I am estimating here is from memory and based on my calendar.

Backlog #1-#25

  • Enrolled in a commercial self-paced JavaScript course - so far I've done about 40% of the contents which cover: basics, arrays, objects, DOM manipulation. 30 hours
  • I had done some HTML about 20 years back, but never pursued that path in my life. 120 hours
  • I went through FreeCodeCamp's web designer course (HTML + CSS), although I did this last year while I was unemployed for a month and I don't remember much of it. I estimate that I spent about 30 hours on it, as I do remember designing some graphics to make the project sites look nicer. 30 hours
  • I've read half of "clean code" and I understood about 95% so far!! 5 hours
  • I realised that I had a git-account which was totally unused, so I started using git (and learning the basics). 2 hours
  • I have helped a few people on freecodecamp with challenges they faced. 6 hours
  • I have started programming a simple card game as a learning project. It's not working yet, but I'll get there! 30 hours

Total time spent on learning: 223 hours

Where do I stand today?

I am fairly confident in understanding the language of JavaScript, HTML and CSS, although I have not spent much time understanding patterns. It is just today that I've begun to look into concepts, such as block scope, IIFE, MVC and the like.

What about you?

How many hours would you say are required to become employable? How far are you down the road? How do you overcome hills and mountains?

Keep up! All the best,
Sebastian.


This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Sebastian Stüwe


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