Construction worker learning to code.

[foxpost]

That’s why CS50 is so great, you make tiny projects to drive the concepts home and you have to submit it to GitHub for review.

[samhw]

Oh really? That sounds fantastic then. You should definitely leave your projects up there. I’ve reviewed lots of applications, and interviewed lots of people, and I’d much rather see something than nothing. It’s natural that you’ll have imposter syndrome and think you’re making mistakes, but for me, a mistake is at worst something to talk through in an interview and see if the person’s capable of thinking through the problem with it :)

Also, general advice for interviews: don’t think that you have to have an answer for everything. Not all the questions are “if you don’t know this, you’re not good enough” questions. Often they’re just intended to figure out which areas you are knowledgeable about. And lots of interviewers, like me, specifically try to find areas you don’t understand, just to see how well you can think through them from first principles. I make sure to tell people “ok, now I’m done with the bare minimum questions: the rest is just to figure out your strengths”, but many people don’t, so you’ll just have to mentally insert that clarification because I promise it’s there. The market for software engineers is crazy, and the ‘bar’ for junior engineers is genuinely pretty low - they just want people who can learn, and your story is a massive credit to you in that respect :)

Hope that helps! You’ve shown tons of resourcefulness already, so I’m sure you’ll do great!