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Discussion on: What's your coding origin story?

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ben profile image
Ben Halpern

First semester felt ridiculous. After most classes I'd say to myself "I know we're just being introduced to programming but Microsoft Word doesn't look like it was made by an array sorting algorithm"

Right when my grades were at their worst, I looked at reapplying for mechanical engineering somewhere else, then there was an event organized by a students' society where a lecturer gave a talk on Android programming and Software Engineering. My life changed right there and then. I wanted to learn everything! Of course at first that didn't help me academically as I was overwhelmed by information available on the web.

Sounds a lot like how I had felt at the time, but I didn't really discover my place until after I'd dropped CS. My school offered very little in practical software development. Only CS and Math.

I had already changed majors out of computer science. I had gotten into tech entrepreneurship but thought it was going to be someone else's job to actually make the stuff. I'd do the marketing. Along the way I stumbled across Ruby on Rails and finally found a platform that empowered my creativity.

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Sdu

I also almost dropped out for the very same reasons but I only held on because my first attempt in freelancing and a startup failed, (great learning experience). Went back to the drawing board, and class. I've learned so much more from then, I'm just waiting for my eureka moment now.