How can I start?
Sharing What Will Be in This Space in 5 Steps
The Goal
This is meant to be an open space to express ideas, insights, and pieces of my journey that may eventually help someone learn faster than I did. But don’t get me wrong; I don’t mean that you should take what I say as the truth, especially since I don’t know much about anything. What I hope is that someone can learn something by taking any piece of information I have gleaned in my (not so) few years in the tech industry.
How it Started
Well, at this point, it might be beneficial to share a little bit of how I got here, on this exact day, typing these words. It might help you realize what kind of knowledge I intend to share (or maybe not since I am discovering it as well).
I started to work early, a few months before I turned 14 years old. I was something like an office assistant. My job was to help with whatever people needed, from buying stuff for an afternoon coffee to typing documents in Word, creating spreadsheets in Excel, and filling Microsoft Access databases. I quickly realized that I enjoyed computer-related tasks more. Not only because I could do them while sitting, but they also began to become a challenge, mostly tasks in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access.
First IT Learnings
To avoid delving into boring details, I discovered how to create forms and macros, and somehow I realized that macros could be transformed into instructions. So, I could write the instructions instead of recording macros. Learning how to write those instructions would be easier nowadays; I could just Google it, and someone, somewhere, would have written a good tutorial for it. But back then, we didn’t have the internet. At least not in a city with no more than 20,000 inhabitants. So the only help I got was from a helpful paperclip named Clippy. It wasn’t AI yet, but it led me to a lot of useful stuff. I began to write code using VBA, and I helped the office become much more productive. The only thing is, I didn’t have a name for what I was doing. I found out just a few years later that I was indeed programming and using databases, both Excel and Access.
The Journey
Long story short, a few years later, I moved to a larger place, went to college, earned my Bachelor’s degree, and started programming. It’s been 14 years since I got my diploma and a little bit more since I started to officially work as a developer. From starting with PHP and Java to gaining a lot of experience with many languages, including substantial mobile experience, there were many late nights, numerous frameworks, a plethora of design patterns, and countless good people who have helped me all the way through.
What Will It Be?
So, this is my opportunity to give something back to the community. I will try to share whatever I can that may help anyone out there. For example, recently I decided to build my personal page to share how to find me. I chose to use Python, a language I had never used before. The site is static; it didn’t need to be made with Python, but I found it a good opportunity to gain some hands-on experience with it. I will share how I did it, the tools I used, and some of the references I referred to figure out what I would do.
This is it; I hope you enjoy it, and if you can, please give feedback. I am a lifelong learner, so I enjoy every opportunity I have to learn a little bit more.