My Tech Origin Story
Hey folks, Let me take you to where it all began. Here's a piece of my journey, raw and real.
We all have an origin story in tech, and NO! mine didn’t involve a hoodie, dark terminal screen, and some Matrix-like music playing in the background. I wasn’t “born to code”. If anything, I spent a good chunk of my early dev life asking Google questions like “What's the most interesting career?” and "How do i know what to pursue?”
This post? It’s personal. I wanted to write this now, while everything’s still raw and messy and in-progress. This is my version of leaving breadcrumbs.
So yeah! here’s how I got here, and where I’m headed next.
When I first got curious about tech, I didn’t even know where to begin. I just knew I liked breaking things and figuring out why they broke. That naturally led me to programming. Python was my first real tool: simple, clean, friendly. The kind of language that gently pats you on the back while still letting you shoot yourself in the foot. I wrote a bunch of print statements, tried to build stuff I didn’t fully understand, and kept hitting errors that felt like personal attacks. But every time I fixed something, even something tiny, it felt like magic. Like: “yo, I did that?”
Of course, I went through that phase every dev hits where I tried to learn everything. One week I’m reading up on networking, the next I’m trying to build a scanner app, and somehow I’m knee-deep in a YouTube video about "Top 10 best programming languages to learn" at 1AM (??? 😅). I was moving, but not always forward. And that’s okay. That’s part of the ride.
Somewhere along the way, I discovered cybersecurity.
And it was like someone handed me a new lens to see the entire tech world differently. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about writing code. It was about thinking, figuring out the how and why. And man, that pulled me in deep.
My first few months in cybersecurity were chaotic, lots of scattered learning. I was doing everything: watching Udemy courses, jumping between HackTheBox, TryHackMe, random articles, old forum threads, spent two months reading compTIA+, even skimming through OWASP docs I barely understood at the time. I was trying to find my thing. Red team? Blue team? Maybe purple, maybe chartreuse? 🤣
Then one night, I stumbled across UnixGuy’s video on “Why Most Beginners Fail at Cybersecurity.” That one hit different. It didn’t just teach, it made me reflect. I wasn’t failing, but I was unfocused. I felt a nudge towards application security, and something clicked. Web apps, APIs, misconfigs, vulns. All the messy stuff that lives right at the intersection of code and security. I was home.
Around this time, I was also navigating college, not exactly the ideal multitask setup, but I made it work. I started small: DoS attacks in a lab setup, web hacking, setting up various linux distros just to find what suits best for me (i use kali btw), brute-forcing services (legally, don’t worry), setting up reverse shells, learning how to phish like the bad guys, just so I could learn how to defend like the good ones.
And somewhere in between, I realized something wild:
Small consistent efforts can add up to something big :: Slow progress > No progress
Meanwhile, I kept coding. Python was still my comfort zone, but then Go (Golang) came knocking. And yeah, if Python is like playing with LEGO bricks, Go is like building IKEA furniture with laser precision. It’s clean, fast, and just works. I spent weeks learning the basics and then proceeded to advanced concepts with goroutines, concurrency patterns, channels. It was fun connecting the dots. I built different software ranging from APIs, Backend, CLIs... (Wait, there's more)
Then came the certifications. Along the way, i got the APIsec Certified Practitioner, and that basically flipped a switch in my brain to just how many APIs are out there casually leaking sensitive data like it’s a hobby. It was a whole new level of security stuff, API designs, documentations...
Right now? I’m obsessed with building tools, solving problems, and contributing to anything that mixes code with security. I’ve started focusing on Application security, secure coding, software engineering concepts and principles (Where software meets security). I want to create things that not only work but are hard to break.
And the best part? I know this is still just the beginning.
Looking back, it's clear I'm not just aiming to learn a thousand concepts. I'm really trying to build a thousand projects. Because when you build a thousand projects, you can learn ten thousand concepts.
This post is a bit of a personal checkpoint for me, something to look back on in a few years and see how far I've come.
#LessonLearned
▫️ Your Passion and Curiosity is your Fuel to Greatness
▫️ Don’t rely on every piece of info from social media
▫️ Your Mindset is Everything
▫️ Never Back Down (Consistency is KEY)
▫️ Don't worry about the Future (Flow with the GO)
Big Thanks 🙏
To everyone who's supported me so far; from X (Twitter), LinkedIn, my college course mates, random Discord servers, the cybersecurity community, and all the quiet internet mentors I’ve never met but who changed my mindset forever. Thank you!
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