At my first job, I watched my manager spend about two hours a day transferring information from our ERP into Excel. That’s how I started learning to code.
I worked in finance. With her approval, I asked the ERP vendor for a quote to automate the report. The price was more than the company would approve.
So I asked if I could try connecting the database to Excel myself. She agreed, provided I was careful not to delete anything.
I had absolutely no idea how to do it. I just believed it was possible.
First, I had to learn how to query a database. Then I discovered how many tables could sit behind a single expense screen.
The ERP supported different business models. Understanding the relationships between tables was only part of the job. I also had to understand how our operation used them and which records belonged in the report.
Then came filtering the data before bringing it into Excel. Pulling everything would have made the spreadsheet unusable.
As far as I remember, it took almost a year to get it working. The spreadsheet could finally read from the source, and those two hours of daily manual work were gone.
I understood the problem from working with the information myself. Learning to build the solution came afterward.
That sequence still shapes how I work today. Understanding the operation helps me decide what is worth building.
And that’s why I love building software so much. You can build almost anything. What was the first problem that pushed you to learn something technical?
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