And if there is no mentor?

On the Internet, there are many questions like: “How to become a programmer?” And “Who among experienced programmers would want to become my mentor, and then, when I learn, work out?”.

There are many answers and they are all correct, but in practice they do not always work, not for everyone, and not quite as we would like. And some share, at first glance, the most correct answers may even harm.

So my answer is the same, so the article’s material will be useful only to those who are really eager to become a programmer, but are outside the system, and, of course, have not yet found the answer for themselves.
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Those who are in the system (students, students, "majors" or those already working in the field of IT) are strictly not recommended to read.

Who is out of the system and what should he do?

The problem is solved by the "method of elimination". Outside the system is the one who does not fit the popular answers to the questions: "How to become a programmer?" And "How to find a mentor?".

The first answer is: "Get to work, and there they will finish their education"

An excellent answer if you are a specialized graduate or a recent student with good grades and live in a big city like Moscow or Kiev. The employer simply has no choice: from whom, then, will the company grow new employees? But if you graduated from a not very relevant institute and not quite recently, and you live a long life, then somehow it’s already not profitable for your employer to grow a new employee.

Answer two: “solve the problem”

Practical advice, especially for schoolchildren 5 - 8 classes. Solving problems, winning olympiads, going to college, winning olympiads again and in 8–10 years you can work out the previous scenario, only with top companies and big starting salaries.

The third answer: "Design yourself a project"

Particularly encouraging is the reservation, which is sometimes added: "Well, since you are not a professional, then you need to find a mentor who will give and test these tasks to you." The variant will work well if you are already an expert, for example, in mathematics and learn C a little to implement an algorithm that has no analogues in the world yet. Or you can work out the following option.

Fourth answer: "Go to courses or hire a tutor"

Brilliant! Probably no one who asked this question, did not know what to do.

Another answer: "No one will be your mentor just like that" or "To become a programmer you need a super talent"

In fact, at least in the answers there are often people willing to be remote mentors and it would be great to listen to the success story of such cooperation.

Something the story begins to drag on, it's time to give a normal answer.

Normal answer:

1. First choose a programming language and technology, considering:
   
   • having a good choice of remote work
   • having a large open community
   • the presence of the object (for example, a phone with Android, if you want to learn how to program for Android)
   
   
2. translate and outline the latest version of the basic reference to the language of development (Flanagan for javascript) to:
   
   • learn technical English
   • to work out the basics of the language by translating, outlining and testing examples in the work
   
   
3. do something in the language of development something useful, and:
   
   • it should be really useful to you personally, to perform some simple, but your tasks for you
   • you should do it the way you like, the way you like, the way you want
   • Do not look back at anyone, do not in any way try to guess what your possible future employer would like to see - you are not a psychic
   • be resistant to any self-doubt and negative reviews.
   
   
4. find a reference source that:
   
   • made by an acknowledged master in the field
   • multi-purpose, widely covers the possibilities of your programming language
   • The author follows a simple programming style and explains his code well.
   • relatively small source size (up to 3000 lines)
   • should be popular enough to make it easy to find answers to your questions.
   
   
5. then you need to work on this source code thoroughly in all possible ways that only come to mind, because the creation of such code is exactly what you should strive for.
   
6. then we return to step 3, only this time to the fullest we use the reference source (as a library, as a style reference, as an object of copy-paste, as a set of patterns, etc.)

And now your knowledge is enough to return to the system and take advantage of popular answers, such as: “Try to work in freelance”, “Participate in opensource projects”, “Get to work, you will increase your level there”. And so on.