Three Months Ago I was a Lawyer

And Now… I Love to Code

I turned 30 this year, despite disliking my job. Yes, this happened. Apparently, my daily fight against workflow did not slow down time. Practicing law is not a peculiar result for someone who went to law school, but nonetheless that’s what it felt like to me, and increasingly so, every week, month and year that passed.

In retrospect, the seed that ultimately grew into my career move was planted in college. When curiosity was my only motivator, I studied math and physics as part of an applied math major that required that I take an introduction to programming class in C++. I loved that class because it appeared to almost completely flesh out the core of what I enjoyed most about my major. To quote one of my new favorite authors:

“Refactor, not because you know the abstraction, but because you want to find it.” — Sandi Metz

Remembering this, the gulf between what I was doing and what I wanted to do shrank every time I shed a reason for staying put.

Recently, I left corporate law and began General Assembly’s Web Development Immersive, a 3 month intensive into computer science fundamentals, information architecture and web development, all in the context of adaptable, extensible, object-oriented design. And now, a little over three months into a profession into which I can’t wait to invest my time and energy, I know I have a lot to learn. But I’m eager to share what I’m learning.

If you’re an experienced programmer, great. I hope I don’t reveal so many nautical miles between myself and the boat, that I’ve missed the boat completely. But I also would love to hear what you think. I’m more concerned with learning than anything. If any of my posts find you, please comment. For anyone else that might stumble upon this post or another, I hope that it is relatable in some way. Happy coding!

Quotes of the day:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet
an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says
“Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a
bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes
“What the hell is water?” — David Foster Wallace

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” — I like to think this was Albert Einstein