Developer career advice?

I’m starting a L3 course in computing and idk if I want to go to uni after or not but I have 2 years to decide anyway. I don’t know exactly what but I’d like to be a website / game developer and I’d like some tips on what I can be doing now and over the next 2 years in my spare time to gain more coding experience and such. I don’t think I can get any work experience because I live in quite a rural area

Build a portfolio in different languages-websites, web applications, games, software.

Brush up your skills in react, angular, node, databases, git, Linux, oop, aws etc.

You could also contribute on open source projects.

I know this but I just don’t know where to start. I also suffer from my levels of motivation changing immensely all the time. One minute I could feel really productive and the next I could just be like why am I doing this???

In terms of places to start, some 'core' programming skills would be the best place to begin (i.e. learning to 'think' like a programmer with the analytical and problem solving skills which are involved).

Have a look at Harvard University's introductory computer science course called CS50 - the problem sets will give you plenty of practice in the basics of coding, and more importantly it'll get you using programming languages to learn to think computationally about problem solving. It's a very good starting point for anyone interested in any kind of technical career in IT:
https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-computer-science-harvardx-cs50x
(You can ignore the paid-for certificate, click the Audit option when enrolling).

CS50x takes around 100 hours or so. There are two follow-up courses. The next stage of CS50 focuses on game programming:
https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-introduction-to-game-development

And here's the Harvard CS50 course for web programming (again, you should do the introductory CS50x course first):
https://www.edx.org/course/cs50s-web-programming-with-python-and-javascript


I'm sure it goes without saying, but motivation really is the key to success if you're looking at self-teaching anything, because you don't have any classes or homework/exam deadlines so it's entirely down to you . Consider taking a look at where you'd like to be in 2 years time and start mapping out the journey to get there.

To begin with you need to build up the technical skills to a point where you're able to start thinking about working on your own projects. Set yourself some achievable short-term goals - for example, you could set yourself the goal of completing one of the CS50x problem sets each week. You might end up doing more than 1 per week, but giving yourself short-term goals to achieve, and setting out a timetable can help to keep you focused.

So if your goal is to reach a point after 2 years where you're able to either think about uni, or begin applying for a software/coding apprenticeship, the 3 Harvard CS50 courses would be a good way to spend the next 4-6 months before moving on to some more intermediate/advanced topics. CS50 should get you over the initial 'bump' from a complete newcomer to a point where you're comfortable using code to build small apps and solve problems, and hopefully help you decide whether it's something you want to carry on in the future too.

If I do these would it be worth mentioning on my personal statement/ cv? 🤔

For a personal statement or anything applying to an apprenticeship then it's great to add anything you've taught yourself in your spare time, so mentioning these courses certainly looks positive if you have completed them. (If you complete CS50 without paying for it, then you can take a screenshot of the 'course complete' screen - this is allowed and encouraged by EdX for people who just work through the Audited course material and submit all the completed assessments)

As for putting it on a CV for job hunting, the problem is that a recruiter reading a CV probably won't know what CS50 is, so realistically it'll probably be meaningless to somebody who is sifting through a large pile of 100s of CVs trying to find a handful of candidates invite for an interview. Unfortunately people reviewing CVs tend to be attracted by specific words and phrases because they generally spend less than 2 minutes reviewing each CV when they have hundreds to choose from. For example, mentions of specific languages/technologies/tools/skillsets. If you mention 'CS50', it may just register as background noise. On the other hand, if you mentioned JavaScript, C and Python, then it would be more likely to catch their eye, assuming that you had something worthwhile to say about it (i.e. more than just a bullet-point or comma-separated list of technologies).

The other part of applying for jobs is to make sure that you've included sufficient detail and concrete examples of your usage of those tools/technologies - so you want the content of your CV to be focused around the projects you've worked on. Of course, you might mention CS50 in the context of "Used the C Programming language to complete the problem sets in Harvard CS50" - in which case, you're covering the fact that you'd used the C language, rather than the fact you've completed CS50. In any case however, your CV should always be personalised/tailored to whatever specific job you're applying for as much as possible (while telling the truth of course), so you really need to look at including the kind of information which is specifically relevant to that job.

I’m starting a L3 course in computing and idk if I want to go to uni after or not but I have 2 years to decide anyway. I don’t know exactly what but I’d like to be a website / game developer and I’d like some tips on what I can be doing now and over the next 2 years in my spare time to gain more coding experience and such. I don’t think I can get any work experience because I live in quite a rural area