I've seen quite a lot of posts on Twitter recently about how people got into coding and there are some really interesting and even wild ones, real career divergents.
'Oh yeah, I used to be a lion dentist and then just learned React and went from there'
'I won the 1998 figure skating championships but now I'm a Python architect'
...and so on.
Joking aside, I once worked with a genuine medical doctor who just pivoted into being a top sysadmin...mental!
But, my origin story is much more beige: I literally worked with computers from about 4-5 years old, learned to code and became a developer....the end.
What are some of your development origin stories? Where did you come from? How did oyu get here? Where are you going?
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I started building with HTML on Geocities when I was a kid, in grade four. My parents were upset about it, but I kept doing it anyway 😂 I stepped away from it a bit as I got older, but started blogging on Wordpress in 2012. I was still doing my own code here and there or helping out with other people, and used my background to cobble together sites or updates for the (non-tech) companies I was working for.
In 2014 I got a support job with a tech company, and started taking relearning coding more seriously. This year, I started taking Superhi courses, which have been really fun!
I was introduced to programming by my Dad in '98. I kept asking for new computer games and he gave me a book on creating your own games in Turbo Basic. I did try them out, kinda liked it, made a somewhat barely working Digger clone (for reference).
However, my life took a hard turn after that. The computer was sold, my dad was switching to another job. Spent the following 15ish years doing something else. I was into music and arts for some reason. I ended up taking Biology as my major instead of IT.
Last year of my bachelor study, my Dad convinced me to go back into programming. It wasn't easy since the passion was there but there was a ton to pick up. I studied hard, was hooked into online webdev tutorial for a few months. When I graduated, I managed to get my first job as a web developer. Spent there for a year and joined Piktochart afterwards, and here I am, doing frontend stuffs instead for the last 5ish years.
I would say it's quite a roller coaster ride, but it is really fun!
I don't know if I count as I'm not there yet. I've had a potted non-it career due to mental health problems of which I'm just coming out the other side. 2 years ago I read somewhere about the need for web developers and stumbled across freeCodecamp. I had a play around then drifted away. Then maybe a year ago I made a more concerted effort but found myself like a beached whale after struggling with javascript and wrote myself off as unsuitable.
However, having read much about attitude and hard work mattering as much as anything innate, I got back on the horse this year. I'm back at javascript which is going a bit better this time but I've also just begun supplementing fcc with Colt Steele's udemy course to really hammer home what I'm learning. This time next year I want to be applying for junior dev posts.
I was getting my teachers license. The classes weren’t offered every semester but the pay difference between licensed and non licensed teacher was so big it wasn’t worth getting a job, so I had a lot of time on my hands. My friend was planning a conference and it annoyed the crap out of me that every day she would have a human log into google forms and make sure no more than 30 people signed up for a class, for over 100 classes. I thought there had to be a way to automate that. Learned python and Django. Made her a site people could use to sign up, check in, etc. Kept going. Made several more Django sites for myself. Now a few years later I’m a full time backend dev and I’m about to take on more freelance coding not bc I need the money, just bc I like it and want to do it all the time.
Awesome! Nothing fuels learning like necessity!
I had never heard about programming until 11th grade when we used Scratch and some other drag and drop software to program robots. Even then, I didn’t realize that it was programming.
I spent 6 months at home after graduating from high school thinking about what to major in. By pure luck, I happened to take one last look at the list of majors (before settling for finance) and saw software engineering which sounded so cool!
I registered the following week and started my Intro to Programming class using Java 😁
I have always liked computers, they always fascinated me. So one day, it was in November of 2015, I was bored, and I ál of the sudden thought, "wouldn't it be cool to learn to code?" And so it was. I did a quick search of "best programming language for beginners", and I click clicked the first link, which was a list of the best languages, if I remember right, and the first item on that list was Python, so that's what I learned. I'm glad I did.
My first interest in programming was when our school got these personal computers for us that were expensive little tanks with about as much power as a leapster. I was bored and found the command prompt window and decided to start messing around. At first I made a simple choice based adventure game, but eventually the chat application my friends and I used had been block by IT. So abusing the school's file sharing server I made a batch program to allow us to message each other from anywhere in the school. Quite the little rebel, we'll just say the tech department kept a close eye on me.😉
I've wandered in and out of coding for 35 years and have worked as a limo driver, a credit analyst, a dental assistant, and bunches of admin jobs. Now I'm a web developer
And how is web development for you? Is this your career to end all careers?
I'm working on a degree and hopefully towards data science. I do love web development though
Used to play Minecraft as a teenager, started administering a server, eventually started creating plugins in Java, then a website for the community.
1992: 7 year old kid with an old Commodore 64, no games but a manual for Basic. 1994: IBM PC with Win 3.0 and QBasic. 1997: QuakeC. 1999: Half-Life level crafting, and C++ Allegro.cc games. 2008: Phone-tech support for a small software company. Lead developer told me to take a look at .NET, but I wasn't a Microsoft fan. 2011: Hired as a .NET developer in same company.
Been working there ever since. Future? To improve I need more insight into how other dev teams work. But I just haven't been able to find somewhere new yet. I like the small company I work for, the people there, and the freedom I have there.