Hi there!
I have seen a lot of people out here lost and unable to figure out the roadmap for their desired field in tech. This can be exhausting especially with the surplus of resources we currently have. Without a concrete plan, It is easy to fall off track. I wrote about learning resources that have helped me through the last 6 months of transitioning into software dev, which you can find here.
General Roadmap
I found this developer roadmap link a few months ago which is focused on roadmaps for different tech careers like front-end development, backend development, DevOps, React developer, Angular, Android, etc. It is updated for 2022 and pretty accurate. You should check it out.
My RoadMap
I started out learning HTML, CSS, client-side JavaScript, bootstrap, and mostly just front end technologies. With time, I realized I wanted backend and this led me to research on it, and over time, I came up with an entire Trello board filled with necessary topics for me to focus on over the next year. Check below for it
When creating your roadmap, you can make use of an app like Trello or notion to categorize them. With Trello, although I do not consistently update it, under each card, I add links to specific sources I used, book pages containing that topic, and the sub-topics I need to cover.
This way I am able to come back to them and easily find a particular thing.
Personally, it is very important I can easily access things like this because sometimes, I'm working on a project and I just remember something but can't remember the details. Considering, that I go through so many resources, write randomly too. It's just so hard trying to remember where exactly I saw something and this helps me with that.
Another thing this helps me with is categorizing topics I will be focusing on for the week, the ones I am currently on, and the ones I have covered. I learned that it is necessary to pick only topics you are sure you can finish that week, to avoid a habit of moving things over to the next week thereby throwing the entire thing off. This is a really good one but doesn't work for me so much. Sometimes I spend 2 weeks on just one topic ( that is in between studying, practicing, and working on my side project). I understand the concept ( or so I think) until It is time to implement and then I find myself struggling. I adopted this method of studying data structures and algorithms.
In conclusion, it is very important to be intentional with your learning. It is easy to fall off track if you don't know what is next from a long pile of topics that are online. One thing being in a traditional learning setting offers you is structure and that is why you are able to finish a load of topics within a semester because it is planned and structured ahead. While self-learning, you can replicate this to maximize your time and for better results.