There are several ways to become a software developer without a CSE degree, thanks to new technologies that make the learning process much easier nowadays. From my experience, I can say the best way to become a software developer is self-teaching and testing things out by following a simple roadmap.

Here are 5 steps to become a software developer without a CSE degree:

What is the software development industry or developer’s responsibility?

Before you set your goals to make a career change or decide to start the journey to become a software developer, you must understand the software development industry and the responsibilities of a developer. In the software development industry, there are different segments available such as mobile apps, web applications, and desktop applications, etc. The responsibilities of a software engineer include designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software. Since the world’s technology is changing quite fast nowadays, a software engineer must keep learning new things to keep pace with the industry and survive in it.

Step 1: Set a roadmap to learn programming languages

There are various free resources available to learn the basics to advanced software engineering. To become a self-taught software developer, you must be prepared to read a lot of documentation and have patience to try all the steps of documentation practically.

First of all, you need to decide on a programming language you want to learn from basics to advance because there are a lot of programming languages available and most of them are multi-purpose languages.

Here is a list of some programming languages you can learn as a web developer:

• HTML  As a developer, you must start learning coding from HTML. It is a markup language that is the basis of website construction. It tells browsers how to render web pages. Although it is not programming in the traditional sense. You can find a whole HTML free course on W3School.
• CSS  is the language that is used to style a web application. CSS describes how elements should be displayed.
• JavaScript  is a common web development language for its simplicity, which developers use to dynamically create web pages. It is also one of the world’s oldest coding languages. While there are many pros and cons of using JavaScript, it has become one of the most popular languages today due to its help in streamlining the development process. Programmers can find various options for frameworks (like jQuery) that improve how they create animations and graphics and how they connect data models.
• Python  A versatile, high-level programming language, Python has quickly gained traction across industries due to its minimal syntax, readability, focus on natural language processing, and ability to handle object-oriented and functional programming. Python is best suited for data analysis and manipulation, machine learning, designing desktop applications, server-side web development (where it is nearly synonymous with Django), and AI.
• PHP  The first release of PHP occurred in 1995, and the language has been growing in popularity lately due to its simplicity and scalability. PHP is mostly used for web development (both back-end and front-end) but also powers online advertising, game development, database management systems, and hosting services. Laravel is a PHP web framework.
• Ruby on Rails  David Heinemeier Hansson created Ruby on Rails in 2004, and it’s considered a highly popular, complex, and object-oriented language. It also has features like concurrency and metaprogramming. This open-source framework allows people to build powerful web applications with minimal effort. Many industries use Ruby, including e-commerce, education, government, and social media.

There are many more languages for development; these are only popular languages of the current market. If you want to be a full-stack developer, then I would suggest learning JavaScript. Because JavaScript has its own ecosystem for the front-end and backend such as for the front-end JavaScript has a library of React and as for the backend Node JS is a JavaScript V8 runtime environment engine. If you want to start with something easier to learn, you can start with Python.

Step 2: Understand data structure and algorithm with best practices

You should learn the programming language by using best practices of that language. It is good to follow the best practices in your codes for the future when you are going to work on projects with others you will be able to understand their code and they will be able to understand and modify your code. You should also always try to solve problems using pseudocode method.

Understanding data structure and algorithms is a very crucial part of a software engineer’s responsibility. Because when a software developer develops a system, sometimes it is required to connect with different databases or you need to create a database for the system.

For the case of algorithms, you need to understand to build a system from scratch. In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is a finite sequence of mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing calculations and data processing.

Step 3: Version Control Git / Github

Version control software is used to track revisions, solve integration conflicts in code, and manage different artifacts involved in software projects. You should properly learn about version control things such as how to use and install git on your local machine, how to use GitHub or GitLab, how to commit or push code to the repository, etc. Store all your projects on GitHub or GitLab so that they are accessible to clients or companies. Build a portfolio website based on GitHub pages or paid hosting domain service. GitHub pages are free to launch a portfolio website. In your portfolio, you must show your skillset list, relevant experience, etc.

Step 4: Practice coding challenges

Besides your practice project, every software engineer must practice a lot of coding challenges to prepare for interviews. For practicing coding, you can check out different websites such as freecodecamp or LeetCode. It is very important to practice challenges to understand different logics of programming. It will help you and increase your knowledge to build a system for your projects and clients.

Step 5: Knowledge and network

As a software engineer, you should always seek better knowledge. Building a network of the same profession will help you a lot to gain deep knowledge. It is better not to reinvent the wheel again and again rather than using the wheel which is available. Building a network sometimes might also help you to land your dream job. Also, it will maintain the pace of your gaining knowledge. Sometimes boot camps can also help to increase your knowledge and possibility to get a better job.