Adulthood can otherwise be an advantage in starting a software development career.
My age and other life experiences are instead the motivating factors in my software development journey.
The emotional and silent torture I received from not doing what I love most is something that I want to talk about. I have always felt like I can do more; like I really want something more challenging in my life.
I will discuss how I pulled through all the hassles while learning how to code. Most of my coding partners have drawn inspiration from my story. This is why I want to share it globally through this article.
My life before joining the tech community
As an economist with a good grade from the university, I use to think I am best-fitted working in a bank as an economist. Never, in my wildest imagination, would I have thought I would end up a software developer at 39 years of age. I would say I am too old to start such a career.
Deep down in my heart, I have always felt empty and unsatisfied in life. Though I made a certain degree of success in different life endeavors I have ventured in, I knew I had not found my purpose. I knew my potentials have always been under-utilized. I needed a change in my career to live a fulfilled life.
I was teaching Microsoft Office programs to students from high schools and civil servants before I started thinking of how those pieces of software were built. I was very familiar with those office programs that I started to feel I needed something more challenging in life. That was how, with my quest to understand how computer technology works, I discovered software development in October 2018 (at 36 years).
Getting into tech
To be honest with you I was overwhelmed by the different software development technologies I had to learn at first. I wanted to be a full-stack web developer and at the same time, a mobile app developer using React-Native. I struggled at first and had my own share of impostor syndrome. There was one thing I told myself and I quote, “If people learned all these technologies and are using them to solve many problems globally, then I can do it too”.
I started building a calculator with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript after taking some courses on the w3chools website. I was lucky to attract the attention of a tech lover, who paid for a full-stack web development course for me at Udemy online. I got my first certification from Udemy in 2019 and that boosted my confidence.
I have currently gotten more than 15 certificates in different web development technologies and from different organizations online (Coursera, Pluralsight, Udemy, Openclassrooms). I currently joined Microverse Inc., a remote software development training school, to learn cutting-edge technologies.
Key takeaway
Irrespective of your age currently, it is never too late to break into tech. You could leverage the power of your life experiences to pull through in this powerful and fun career. I hope my story serves the purpose of motivating you in your software development journey.
