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What is your story with software development? 🐱‍💻

Bartosz Pietrucha on September 19, 2019

What is your story with software development? When did you start? How did you learn? I would love to hear about your journey 😃 When it comes to me...

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AlbertoM • Sep 19 '19

Mine started in 2016 and I self studied until I got a software developer job last year. I come from a bachelor of law and accounting background. Switching to programming was the best decision I took. I actually wrote an article about it ( here)

Chris Achard • Sep 19 '19

I wrote about that here! dev.to/chrisachard/what-is-your-de...

But here is a slightly different version:

Got interested early, but didn't have the equipment to really learn the "right stuff" (I just had an old atari programmer that I got to make beep and show cool colors 🦄
Spend high school learning HTML
College was computer engineering...
...but then went immediately into webdev and forgot all of the circuits knowledge I had 😅
Now I do consulting and I teach people React (and other things!)

I think it's really important to know the story of yourself - it helps you figure out where you're going, and what you want to do next. Thanks for the post!

Bartosz Pietrucha • Sep 19 '19

Thanks for your comment! Yes, it's really good to remember where we came from. Looks like we ended in a similar way - I do consult and teach people Angular :D

Dominik Mack • Sep 19 '19

My Story as Developer started Back in 2010 when a Gaming Magazine in Germany wrote about Knight Rider - The Game. The Story about a Car with Artificial Intelligence hooked me immediately and I wanted something like this in my Car, too.

Now I'm a Java Developer in a local Company. But hey, I'm happy with it, too.

lepinekong • Sep 20 '19

I must be the oldest here I started computer in the eighties as a child with Zx81 and 64Ko the highest memory possible ;) But it was just due to scientific curiosity of mine, I coded a rather complex loto program (I had always kind of fascination for probability) for my father in law, who bet 100$ and won 10$ so kind of exploit but that didn't incite me to continue. Later at school, I had the chance to be in rare one that had personal computers, a club's geek showed me how to do an addition program in basic, which I found too simplistic (my zx81 program was so much fun), I found that boring so I gave up. I was bored even in engineering school with assembly, pascal and prolog, it was only when we were taught grafcet diagram method to automate a whole complex factory that It got me interested. Professionally it is only after Lotus spreadsheet and Borland Database came out that I started to find some interest: so it took me a lot of years :)

Gabi • Sep 20 '19 • Edited

Hi, I was born at the end of communism time in Romania and after the revolution (i was 4) information and investors start coming in the country. I didn't had a computer until my last year of high school, nobody i knew had one and we were poor :) Advertisements were targeting boys not women, shit like that.

I decided to go do a Bachelor in Computers because once at an evening out, a guy fried that was in 2nd year there asked me why i don't want to study computers. I replied mostly like this: "because i don't know anything about them".

I had a computer for almost an year then but i spent weeks with changed color scheme in Windows (from color to black and white) and not knowing how to redo. That type of user I was. It didn't even occurred in my head to search for a programming language book and the internet was after a few months of my new(second hand) computer arrived. That's the problem with exposure to information, even if it exists, a person needs to understand that they need to act in order to learn/find out stuff.

I decided in the end to go forward with that, after I asked my Math teacher if I should, he had no idea either, but was kind enough to say "why not".

I spent the next couple of years (out of 4) building frustration, crying, trying to understand what they were teaching at school. During this time,i used to buy sandwiches and drinks for former high school friends that were 1-2 years ahead of me to uni to explain basic stuff to me. Conditional statements, loops, algorithms etc. Fun, fun times. Kudos to that teacher that explained bubble sort algorithm 5 times to me.

It was only 10-11 years ago but i couldn't find an internship or part time work at a local IT company even if my life depended on that. Plus, where I sent my CVs (by email and with cover letter), not one! company replied. I sent the CV's again after a few months. My local job market is not great but it's awesome compared to a decade ago.

Fast forward again, I learned from my mistakes when choosing who to work for, who to help. I am loving my career and it's not a linear one and it's mine. I worked a lot of years in projects that involved Java, either native Android (awesome) or backend with Spring Framework and other projects in between with Python. For the last 7 Months I am learning JavaScript, React.js, CSS by working on a personal side project (thank you to all the people that share online information) because I want to work on more projects that are interesting and useful to people not just companies. I am trying to be actively involved in my career, because it's what suits me best,and not rely only on companies. I want to work on projects that do good, that help people and of course to work with kind curious people.

Until now i worked on some interesting projects with their own complexity, I am trying to be better as a programmer, to read and try new patterns/things because this is a very changing domain.