Topic : Why did you decide to learn software development?
Technology has been part of my life since I was in elementary school. It was thanks to that early exposure that I first learned about programming, and how programs could make people’s lives better. I grew up with the Mavis Beacon typing software, and the rudimentary typing games were inordinately fun. Shortly after that, my class was exposed to things like SparkTop.org, and an investment simulation.
The crowning moment that got me into software though, was that our technology teacher put us into pairs and had us create our very own video games. These games were very rudimentary and they utilized a program that is a very old favorite of mine, MicroWorlds EX. As a class, we even had a giant robot turtle that accepted procedures and would execute them. That first video game was the first time that I thought that programming was amazing and fun. I spent more than a few hours that summer just playing around with a demo version of the program. It was awesome.
Cue several years being peripherally involved in the tech world. I dabbled in being a help desk tech in high school, had some fun times with Scratch and RUR-PLE, and took an Intro to Python course my first semester of college, but I never really considered programming as a career. I kept thinking that even though I ended up taking a “programming” class every semester for the entirety of my college years. It was a bit of a fluke in my final year, during my mobile apps development class, that my teacher told me about a product development internship for the summer. Since it was paid, I decided to at least interview.
That internship led to freelance then full time offers. It was at that job that I realized that I actually kind of knew what I was talking about, and programming might be a viable career for me. Taking the Full Stack Web Development (with React) bootcamp is my first step to making programming more “official”. Thanks to programming being more of a hobby than a vocation, I have a lot of diverse experience, but no formal schooling when it comes to being an actual developer. My goal is to have this course help tie all of my experience together, and to fill in gaps in my existing framework.
If there is one major thing that I’ve learned when it comes to programming, it is that there is always room for learning!