Not so Rare, JavaScript Story of the Crazy Ordinary Guy
Stories are good to have, when you are doing something awesome.They make you feel alive. They empower you to do more. They are good to share & experience, you won’t notice sometime but you might have inspired others by telling your story.
Recently, I told my story about how I got into programming and started coding with JavaScript in My JavaScript Story podcast which is organized by Devchat.tv. Devchat.tv is organized by Charles Wood with a mission to show programmers how to use the tools and technologies at their disposal to reach for things that were once impossible but can now be enhanced by our code. If you want to listen to the podcast episode, you can listen here.
While you can always listen to the podcast. Here, I am sharing in detail my journey into programming and JavaScript.
Chapter 1: First Engagements
I was born in a family which doesn’t have any exposure to technology back then, and a culture where a government job is very much essential and appreciated. It got me time to get the direct engagement with the technology side of things for me. It was cooler to see tech stuff back then and coolest to own one. The first mobile, I had seen was an LG Reliance with blue-black screen.
Jumping to 2002, When I was 8 years old, I saw the first computer of my life in school when I was in the second standard [ Thanks to my parents who sent me to that technologically advanced school at that time] because that was a financial sacrifice for them.
It is funny to remember that, at that time my mind just went crazy after sawing that first computer and I just thought that I will change the world with this cool shit.
Chapter 2: First Programming Language
I learned a very basic programming language, my school used to teach called LOGO (Logical oriented and Graphical Oriented). This was the first programming language I started with.
I loved to use this to design some basic shapes. It was used to logically design the line graphics using which you can make drawing functions to paint out something.
Chapter 3: Medieval technological additions
In 2006, my tuition teacher introduced me to DOS (Disk Operating System) basic kernel functions, using which I was able to do pretty much for which I used GUI in Windows XP back then. I was pretty much amazed to see, what lies behind GUIs is the functions and commands which run to get your work done.
Later on, my study continued and I became busy in my school stuff, where they taught us to use applications like MS Office, Corel Draw and all other which were highly in demand for a school kid to learn.
When I got promoted to my 10th standard, then my actual web career initiated, they taught me HTML that time and the Project I completed that time was a pretty much structural side of the website with no CSS at all.
After I passed out 10th standard, my technological learnings were paused, because of the stream, I chosen in my high school. So I was completely out of the reach from technology tracks for almost 2 years.
Chapter 4: The High Time
When I got into the College in 2012 with Information Technology as the department of study. I was very much excited to see that I am finally at some place where I can make my dreams come true. I started focusing on the programming languages they used to teach, starting out with C, then C++ (using that Turbo C, the traditional C/C++ code editor) and then used Code blocks (which turns out to be a good IDE).
Going through command line code with C and C++, I really started liking command line, and started writing out scripts and all to automate the things I used to do daily. Which I use to do now also.
This was the time when I was kind of into system administration kind of things. I got so much obsessed with it that there was a time when I had 6 partitions of my hard drive and there used to be 5 Linux distros and a copy of windows in my PC, I loved to play around the architecture of these distros and how they worked.
Well, in sidewise I was also doing some blogging stuff to earn some bucks for myself, so that I do not have to ask my parents for the pocket money (Life was pretty much free back then). Along with this, I used to edit the templates for my blogs and for self-learning, I started editing the templates for WCMSs like Blogger and WordPress (only HTML/CSS). Apart from editing HTML/CSS, I used to copy/paste JavaScript codes into them. At that point, I never realized that I should learn JavaScript.
I was also a Microsoft student partner, So I used to be involved in windows insider programs to give feedbacks and make stuff out of the technologies which were being introduced at that time.
I was learning and programming with JAVA at college (with which I spent most of the time learning and writing codes in my last year of graduation) and then with Android and then with Python.
Chapter 5: Final Countdown to JavaScript
After being graduated in 2016, I felt like, I was the Jack of all trades but master of none. I was craving for more knowledge and I was looking to create a treasure of knowledge in my mind, but at the same time, I wanted to master something which I can love doing (Like those Kung Fu masters who master their Chi ).
Then freeCodeCamp happened to me, On the day of 1st January 2017, I started learning with freeCodeCamp which is founded by Quincy Larson. I tried other platforms (Codeacademy, Treehouse, to name the few) too before, but I wasn’t comfortable with them.
Learning with freeCodeCamp has its own experience where you are the in-charge of the things — what you learn when you learn and how you learn. With freeCodeCamp, In less than 3 months I was diving deep into JavaScript.
Later on, I got the chance to join Chingu a free Cohort where you can learn your desired technologies in the group and making projects out of it.
Chingu found to be really helpful for me and it escalated my learning curve and within a short span of time I learned React.js and got my first Freelance work offer in May 2017, and Now I am working with Localtrip as a Product developer for more than one and a half year, Localtrip is a Startup and since I have the nature of learning anytime and anywhere, so I am learning and working with the cutting edge technologies right now and I love to explore all the technologies which are being created over JavaScript and NodeJS.
Feel free to reach me out for any queries related to JavaScript. If you are on Twitter, you can follow me to get some of the awesome news about JavaScript and other technologies too and to Follow my journey, you can also join me on Instagram.
