The first option, which we recommend, is to enroll in a Software Developer program to master programming on a professional level. The SoftUni curriculum is carefully developed by Dr. Svetlin Nakov and his team, in order to provide you consequently and with gradually increasing complexity all the skills that a software engineer must have, in order to start a career as a software developer in an IT company.
The training in SoftUni has a duration of 1-2 years (depending on the profession and the selected specializations) and during that period it is normal to reach a good starting level (junior developer), but this is only if you study seriously and write code intensely every day. Upon having good grades, a typical student starts a job around the middle of the training (after around 1.5 years). Thanks to the well-developed partners network, the career center of SoftUni offers work in a software or IT company to all SoftUni students who have very good or excellent grades.
Keep in mind that to become a programmer takes a lot of efforts, writing tens of thousands of lines of code, and solving hundreds, even thousands of practical problems, and this takes years! If someone offers you "an easier program" and promises you to become a programmer and start working within 3-4 months, then either they are lying to you, or they will give you such a low level, that companies won't even take you as a trainee, even if you pay to the company that is wasting its time with you. There are exceptions, of course, for example if you are not starting from scratch, or if you have extremely well-developed engineering thinking, or if you apply for a very low position (for example technical support), but in general, you cannot become a programmer if you haven't spent at least 1 year of intense learning and code writing!
SoftUni’s self-paced programs are designed as a sequence of modules giving you fundamental knowledge in software development and practical skills to prepare you to work as a programmer with the latest software technologies. The classes are divided into learning theory (30%) and doing exercises and projects (70%).
The training for software engineers at SoftUni is a very serious endeavor and you need to spend on it at least 4-5 hours every day, in the best case scenario, all the free time you have. Combining training with other obligations is not always easy. Of course, it is always best if you can dedicate all your time and attention to mastering programming but SoftUni’s self-paced Software Developer programs make it possible to learn at your own pace. They are great for high school pupils, university students, and people with full or part-time jobs. And remember, you cannot become a successful software developer by only practicing 2-4 hours a week. As a minimum, you need to spend at least 20-30 hours a week learning to code.
We recommend to everyone who gets an excellent score at Judge Problems and is passionate about making programming their profession, to consider leaving the rest of their commitments aside to spend more time on learning the profession of a software engineer and start making a living through it.
We recommend to all who cannot get an excellent score at the SoftUni entrance exam to spend more time on better learning, understanding, and most of all, practicing the material studied in the present book. If you cannot easily solve the problems in this book, you will not be able to cope with programming and software development in the future.