Not Everyone is Coding Material
There are a lot of advertisements out there for expensive coding boot camps that spread the idea that anyone could be a coder… you only need to spend this much money for a short boot camp. It’s Easy! This is simply not true. I would say most people could be coders if the commitment is there, but you have to have an inclination for it. You also need to have a mixture of both a creative and logical way of thinking.
Whenever anyone asks me if I think if they can code. I always say I don’t know because I one never has to scrutinize their friends and acquaintances in logical thinking. I would say the best test to see if you can be a coder is to see how good you are with truth tables.
Truth tables, probably learned and promptly forgotten by most math students growing up in the first world, are simply tables where you are tasked to follow a sequence of conditions and compute if your missing table item(s) are true or false. By googling “Truth Table Practice,” you can see what these are and practice a few in various websites.
Truth tables have many corollaries in programming. Following the chain of truths and falses requires a good short-term memory, necessary for following variables and methods through chains of functions. Both truth tables and programming need an understanding of tables, the building blocks of databases. There is also the need to understand meeting conditions through control structures.
I really think that if you can do truth tables with ease, you have potential. If you can’t, then I’d say it’d be a long battle and that it’d be better to do something where you’d be more naturally inclined. I also recommend trying free resources before investing any money into a boot camp. If you’ve exhausted all the free resources to learn coding and have gotten nowhere, don’t think using paid resources will be any better.
There’s a reason why developers are still paid well. It’s difficult. No, it’s not rocket science… however, it’s not a breeze, either. I’ve worked with several interns