Exploring Software Engineer In My Eyes As A 14 Year old

Hello. I'm new to Hashnode and I really don't expect anyone to see this post I'm just here to write about my journey so far in learning to code and exploring Software Engineering in general. I began when I was 13 so I've been coding for about 7 months, maybe? Since march, and I began with Web Development in mind, I didn't do much research at the time so I didn't know that there were these other big fields like App Development, Machine Learning, Data Science, and other languages that I could've started with instead of HTML like Python, Java, C#, Dart and more.

But nevertheless I was interested in Web Development, I loved how big it seem and how much I could expand it to, from websites to mobile apps with React Native, to machine learning algorithms with TensorFlow.js and more. I loved the option of being able to learn more than I could ever imagine, it seemed amazing, like I could run wild in a world which I understood and I could make anything my mind could think of.

So I learned HTML in my goal of becoming a full-stack engineer, then I learned CSS and on my way to CSS I realized... I hate CSS, it's so complicated and it makes no sense why my grid isn't centering the way I want it to center, so when JavaScript came around, I was the happiest coder alive. Now at this point I hated CSS and the front-end in general, so I decided I was going to pause my front-end course and dip my feet into back-end, so I learned JavaScript for the back-end. And my lord, I LOVED it. I instantly picked up most of the concepts, variables, arrays, loops, functions, objects, everything! It felt great.

So I began making projects left and right, my first project was an eight ball game, where I used switch statements because I found if/else statements really ugly and I wanted to practice switch(), that first project was in July of this year, so far I have 9 under my belt and planning my biggest one yet. So my plan changed, I want to focus on back-end more than the front-end. And this is where my confusion started.

I started researching about different languages I could use for the back-end because I want to upskill my knowledge and skills in the back-end plus I'm a curious person I want to see what is in store for me. And this was the rabbit hole I wish I could've prepared for, because the amount of resources used in the back-end really scared me since I didn't know where to go.

• JavaScript/TypeScript
• Java
• PHP
• C#
• Go
• Kotlin
• Python
• Rust
• Ruby
• Scala

I was overwhelmed with what I could choose and I didn't know who to ask for help, I didn't know which language/s I should go for, I was stuck. So I started asking around in different programming discord servers and everyone said "Learn one and stick with it", so I decided I'd build my own stack with research and questions, and I started off with "JavaScript/TypeScript, C#, Python, PHP and Java including SQL".

After asking more questions on this matter everyone told me "This is too much for you to learn you're just going to overwhelm yourself" and in hindsight, they were right, but at the time I was stuck! JavaScript/TypeScript is used in the front-end and back-end, C# is popular in web development, Python is very popular, PHP is still very looked for in different jobs and Java is high in-demand. I didn't know what to do, so I decided to shrink my roadmap into a little shorter list "TypeScript, Python, C# and Java", and still "This is too much", "Your plan sucks", "Best to learn none of these, you'll be crap at 4 and good at none." "I would personally skip C#", "C# is fine, I'd skip Python".

And again I was stuck. I stopped asking questions because I felt like I was being obnoxious but I really just wanted answers, a mentor, someone who knew and could give me definitive advice instead of "This is too much to learn" because then my question became more "If this is too much, then what should I learn?"

Skip forward to now, I'm still learning JavaScript, still a bit stuck but I have an idea of what I want for the future, my plan is to basically get really good in TypeScript and Python and in the future get more familiarized with Go or C#. Even still, I want answers to my questions. But I'm too scared to ask. I don't like to seem annoying. Which is why I came to Hashnode, to look for people in another community in another website who could help me find answers and me myself explore their stories.

And this is more or less where my journey is at right now, I have a bit of a plan for the future but I'm not sure if it is the right one, I'm scared to ask more questions so I try to keep things to myself and do my own research though I wish I could have a mentor or someone with more experience than me who I could look to for different answers.

I hope you enjoyed reading my blog, if anyone did read it. But if you did, thanks. This is my first time making a blog and I really don't know if it's for me.

Thank you. Bye bye.