Taking the LEAP p1

Thinking about it

These are three phases I gone through before making the decision to take the LEAP! and become a software engineer part 1.

We've all gone through it, At some point in life we had that discussion with ourselves. I want to change careers, I want something more challenging to do, I want a new field of work. For those individuals i'm happy to tell you, you aren't alone. I too was in this position, I planned on transitioning from Physical Therapy to Accounting until a patient of mine convinced me to give Software Engineering a try. I did some googling and realized how cool the tech field was. But I needed to do some self reflecting before going forth with this decision.I asked myself three questions:

"Why do I want to join tech?"

"Is this the best fit for me?"

"How do I plan on achieving this?"

asking myself these questions were crucial, NEVER rush a decision. Below are my reasoning and thought process.

Why I wanted to join tech?

1. Technology is the backbone in today's society, all the advancement in technology has lead to a more connected, convenient and informative way of life. I've had the privilege of watching technology grow over the past decades and seeing the impact of softwares like educational platforms, financial technology apps, Social media. This was a big motivator for me to get into tech, the ability to create and impact many lives through software was inspiring to me and it is why I decided to learn software engineering.

Is this the best fit for me?

1. You may be asking "how do I know if this is the best fit for me?" The way I found out for myself was by going on youtube, learning about the industry from others currently in it. I used beginner friendly apps like mimo and challenged myself with web apps like https://freecodecamp.org. By applying myself I was able to know if tech was a good fit for me. I paid attention to my ability in problem solving and my approach on it. I observed how it made me feel when I was stuck on the same problem/errors for hours. I Come to realize how entertained I was by the challenge of creating working lines of code. I noticed how fast time flew by when I began coding, hours would go by and I would not sense any kind of fatigue. I knew it was right for me when being consistent with learning didn't feel like a chore.

How do I plan on achieving this?

1. My approach to becoming a software engineer is to get better everyday, learn a minimum of one concept a day. When you understand the overall concept of a method, you will better understand how to implement your knowledge. I will also get comfortable with googling things I don't know! it'll serve me well. Google, stackOverflow, w3Schools are great resources to use when you are coding these are your tools. Repetition and consistency is how I plan to achieve my goals of becoming a full stack engineer. I'm currently attending Flatiron school's software engineer bootcamp!

This was my thought process through my decision to take the leap on becoming a full stack engineer.