When you start your journey as a software developer you might be unsettled for most of this stage owing to many factors, which could be problems in choosing your primary programming language, the uncertainty of the future, sometimes intimidation from seeing other people who have done well in the industry.

Patience is a key element of success - Bill Gates Founder of Microsoft.

Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

Whatever it is, here are the basic tools you will need in your starter pack. With that said, walk with me.

A Primary programming language

To be a software developer you must be able to talk to the computer. And this is beyond pressing keys and clicking Icons. More like giving instructions to the computer to get them to do something for you. That is the whole point of programming. To be able to do this you need to learn a programming language. There are tons of programming languages. Some of which are very popular and some of which are not. But whichever one you pick, as long as it does the job and is relevant in your zone(where you reside) it is a big win.

Some examples are (in no particular order),

• Python
• Java
• Kotlin
• C#
• JavaScript
• GoLang
• Ruby
• Swift e.t.c

You should be fine if you pick any of these.

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If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying, planning, and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started. - Drew Houston CEO DropBox

Git

WAIT!!! You probably heard of this often than not. Well, GIT is a versioning system. More like your time machine. So when you make mistakes you can go to previous versions of yourself to tell them to not make the same mistakes again. But this time it is your lines of code. But you might as well cause a ripple in the timeline winks

HTML, CSS and JS

As cliche as this sounds, one moment or the other you might have to learn these. So you should have it bootstrapped in the early stages of your career. Basic knowledge of how HTTP requests are handled will help too.

Stack-Overflow

When learning to code. You do not have to know everything. In fact, I do not think it is possible to. You CANNOT know everything. So you might run into mistakes. Most certainly errors that people have come across in the past when they went through this process too. Stackoverflow is a free platform dedicated to developers to help with problems you face when writing code.

Programming isn't about what you know; it's about what you can figure out.

A Computer

Since programming is talking to the computer, you sure need one to talk to. A computer with 4GB RAM and 250-500GB in space should be enough to start.

A basic understanding of Data Structures and Algorithms

Data Structures are the programmatic way of storing data so that data can be used efficiently. Algorithms are ways of arranging and manipulating these data. Just about any Enterprise application uses Data structure and algorithms in one way or the other. It is your toolbox for solving problems. It gives you a lot of options when you think of or formulate solutions.

With all these tips, you should be on the right track to set a solid foundation in your tech career as a newbie software developer.

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