[avip]

>Six months sounds like a lot

No, it does not. Learning new skill from scratch takes time. You're trying to master 2 new, orthogonal, in some sense contradictory skills: web development, and self-promotion (to find your place in "the job market"). Take a deep breath.

[gwbas1c]

Considering how little I knew after a 4-year Bachelor's degree, 6 months of nights and weekends is insignificant.

[protonimitate]

I don't think it's directly comparable.

There's a difference, and not insignificant, between "learning everything for CS degree" vs "learning what you need to get hired as a web dev".

But I'll agree that 6 months is not that much time in the "learn new career skills and find a job" timeline. I spent around 18 months of nights/weekend practice and learning, followed by 3 months of interview prep before I found a job and that was with a big spoonful of luck.

To OP - this is a marathon, not a sprint. Get used to learning things on your own, you will be doing it for the rest of your career if you make the switch.

[tracker1]

> Get used to learning things on your own, you will be doing it for the rest of your career if you make the switch.

Cannot second this enough. As a developer, there will always be new tools and technology. More room to grow into adjacent development. And more line of business knowledge to gain. I can't think of any other field, that has more lifetime learning involved in it.

[puranjay]

My brother-in-law was doing a Master's in Chemistry. In May 2018 he knew next to nothing about CS. In November 2018, he landed a junior data scientist position at a prestigious healthcare company.

Granted, he's very smart and basically coded all day for 6 months, but I'd say it is possible for a motivated individual.

[tracker1]

I always say that motivation and self-drive account for far more in terms of success with software development than anything else. In the end, it's the guys that figure stuff out, explore, research on their own that you want to keep around.

[wjoe]

To be fair, considering how much actual programming I did in a 3 year Bachelor's degree, 6 months of learning programming could be plenty significant.

Which isn't to say the non-programming stuff in my degree was irrelevant, but you don't need to spend 4 years full time studying to learn relevant skills for a junior web developer job, and you could easily learn them in less time outside of a degree.

[taurath]

Think about it this way, its less about learning everything you need to know, its learning enough about learning that you can learn the minimum and then learn even more once you pass the bar.

[ellius]

Anecdotal data point, it took me a little over 3 years of nights and weekend learning to go from zero programming knowledge to a full-fledged coding job. That included interim positions where I was using code to solve problems (VBA, R, and SQL especially) but was not a professional coder.