My journey from clueless teenager* to full time developer
*still clueless today although I know a bit about web development
I was always the weird kid who didn’t want to win any game, wasn’t competitive at all. Didn’t get along too well with how school works but I was curious enough one summer (I was 14, I think) to learn Photoshop from Youtube videos because I thought editing pictures was really cool.
And that’s how I slowly began to realize what a powerful tool the internet is.
Motivation for being self-taught
In the following summers, aside from wasting loads of time on video games, I learnt Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, all for the same purpose, I thought it gave me superpowers that ordinary people and most people I knew didn’t have. It was my secret weapon.
Side-note: I had some small encounters with programming during this time but I was too young to understand what was going on and it didn’t stick with me because it was rather scary and much harder to build something.
Fast forward through my graphic design and creative media phase, I think I became pretty decent (judge for yourself) but the coolness started to fade away and so did my interest. I knew that in the long term I had to find something else.
The first time I had a taste for programming was in high-school and I enjoyed it but I was discouraged to pursue it by my better, smarter class mates and the seemingly saturated market for programmers.
The turning point
During my senior year I completely severed all ties to the creative world in an attempt to focus on my exams and during this time, after having talked with some people in the development field, I learnt a big lesson and decided to apply it straight away:
What you know vs what you like doing — It’s never a bad idea to start from scratch with something that scares you but also puts a spark in your eyes
Let me explain: I was skeptical about being a programmer since I had a good basis of knowledge for design and a good ‘head start’ compared to anyone else I knew. However I remembered that I had my secret weapon, the internet full of resources and my ability to learn fast when under the influence of ‘this is really cool’. I knew I wasn’t specifically talented with design and that talent had little influence when compared to hard work and perseverance.
“Alright, let’s do this!”
Being young and foolish, I had romanticized this path of being a hotshot designer and when it came to shatter it and project myself into another future, the harsh reality struck me: I wasn’t doing anything I was supposed to at my age, what my friends were doing, study for school, get diplomas for volunteering, look for universities, have fun etc. and I had nothing since I decided to follow another career path. From this new perspective it was as if I wasted all my high school years, barely passing classes.
Right after graduating high school I was faced with the opportunity to start an internship in an agency and this is where I found my small design background to be helpful and translated to a finer attention to detail learning front-end development building custom Wordpress themes. I loved it. It was a beautiful transition from where I’ve been to where I want to be.
During the day I was learning, during the night I was learning, weekends, hours, tutorials, stack overflow, errors, bugs, “how to __”, leaving the office at 2am, I was hooked and I knew I found my area to shine in.
Where I’m at now
I’m still experiencing with what niche of development I want to stick with and I think that’s fine, I have plenty of time to specialize and settle. I’m not that interested in what framework or stack or technology to learn but rather how to think, find patterns and make strong abstractions.
I am thankful for all the people in my life that contributed to my path, supported me. Especially my parents for having the courage to let me choose what I want to do with the risk of making mistakes.
Today I know the grind continues, as Casey beautifully puts it here:
If you made it this far, you are a hero!
