What made you want to become a dev?

I signed up for the free 14 days trial at Treehouse. I started with the Web development track and worked through the HTML and CSS stuff. After a week or so, my first website was out there on the web. The website had nothing special, an about page and a homepage. But I made it, all me, and it was an unbelievable feeling. From that point I was just curious to know what was possible with programming. And here I am :)

Video games

I'm currently 18 years old. Back in 2012, I was 13 years old and I was a Club Penguin player since 2009. In Club Penguin, there were some special penguins (managed by administrators) with the ability to give backgrounds and stamps to other penguins if they hung around together, so during parties people used to look for them everywhere.

Since we were bloggers, we had an image in our blogs with the location of the "special penguin", and that image was updated with a simple form in PHP. I wanted to build something better than that, so I built TrackYourPenguin. The system logged every update, allowed you to upload the images, have different themes, tweet the location of the "special penguin", and more, and it was easy to install (like WordPress, you didn't need to know about programming).

Also, just like in WordPress, I learned to add a button to update the entire system once there was a new update available. Many people enjoyed it, since it was the most complete system and they didn't need to know about coding. It was the project that taught me the most when I was a simple beginner.

I walked into a computer science classroom five years ago not knowing what code was. I had no context on how computers worked, how programming worked, or even what a programming language was. I quickly fell in love with writing Python, I thought it was awesome how I could build something useful and run it on my computer!

I re-fell in love with programming when I learned webdev with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. I could build webpages that were fully interactive relatively easily!

To quote the amazing Sandi Metz:

Those of us whose work is to write software are incredibly lucky. Building software is a guiltless pleasure because we get to use our creative energy to get things done. We have arranged our lives to have it both ways; we can enjoy the pure act of writing code in sure knowledge that the code we write has use. We produce things that matter. We are modern craftspeople, building structures that make up present-day reality, and no less than bricklayers or bridge builders, we take justifiable pride in our accomplishments.

This all programmers share, from the most enthusiastic newbie to the apparently jaded elder, whether working at the lightest weight Internet startup or the most staid, long-entrenched enterprise. We want to do our best work. We want our work to have meaning. We want to have fun along the way.

When I decided to become a Dev, I had no clue how I was going to do it but I just knew that it was for me. I knew deep inside that I just loved computers, maybe it's because I grew up with tech around me.

Now, that sounds vague and all but my intuition was reinforced when I actually started coding because of a startup idea and fell in love coding. Kind of the same way you put it, here I was making magic using a keyboard and that blew my mind away so I kept on learning and still continue to learn because I love the adventure that coding brings.

I've shared a bit about my journey as a self taught developer before so you could take a look at that article if you're interested to know more because I'd just be repeating the same story.

I think it was a long continuation from the late 80's, when I was about 9 years old. It was then when we got our family's (well, practically it was mine) first computer, an Amstrad CPC 6128 and it came with couple of games. After playing two days some silly soccer game I felt kind of disappointed. "Is this all I can do with it??" I remember thinking back then. Not long after I realized that I could actually make the computer do stuff by typing these long listings of commands to a BASIC interpretator. POW! Mind was blown. After that, all I wanted to do, is make the computer to do stuff. Quite soon the situation was such that there wasn't any question that I'd wouldn't go all the way to a university to study this stuff. It was sort of a "active drifting journey" to this profession. :)

For me it was when I was in high school and got into 3D modeling which led me down the road of game development. And then after that I just started to explore a million other avenues of programming and landed in web development after I realized just how powerful and limitless it can become. Once I decided I wanted to get into web I played around in a few different languages like ruby and php and eventually every thing clicked the most with JS. And I have been taking it from there.

Mine is the idea of the power the computer has to be able to build things and the joy that comes along which all seems like a magic to me

A bet and an IQ test!
I'm petty like that!

A good friend exposed me to QBasic when I was in 6th grade. I also got exposure to a game called ZZT which has a Basic type of scripting language. I was fascinated by the construction of the code and what I could do to tell a computer what to do. From there I aspired to be a developer getting my B.S in Computer Science.

For me, I got my first laptop in 6th grade and found Applescript. I asked my dad what I could do with it, and he said pretty much everything. And with all that power at my fingertips, the first thing I did was make my computer say "fart". That's when I knew this was what I wanted to do :)

I had a similar experience. I was first introduced to programming in my first semester of College in 2007. My first programming language was "C", I didn't really like it much because I didn't see the importance of it, since most of the programs I wrote were console programs. It wasn't until the following semester I was introduced to Java and the first basic assignment was to build a simple GUI with a button component. When the button is pressed it displays "hello world". After I compiled and executed the application I was blown away. I was like "Wow I made this!?!?" from then on my interest in programming skyrocketed and loved it ever since then and I knew I had found my passion. Fast forward 10 years later and I'm working as a Software Engineer and I love it!

Well, almost five years before, I bought a computer and I have finally got internet access in my own house, then all the time since I was a kid I wanted to make videogames. My computing teacher told me a few years before that C++ language was easy, and the same day that the internet was installed I put in google "programming languages for make videogames", and C++ appeared again other languages were there too like C# VisualBasic.NET but, C++ convinced me, I dowloaded Dev C++ and two hours after I've written my first Hello world. I have to say that my first C++ Teacher was Jesus Conde, his youtube channel still active 'till today.

Today I work as a Junior Programmer, well Im not making videogames yet but I'm still working on it ;)

To be honest, I got into this because it was such an "in" thing. At first, I really thought this was a gateway pass to a good career, meaning it was well paid and highly regarded (even if it wasn't like other certified courses like being a Doctor or Lawyer).

I got into coding bootcamp with that goal in mind: for a well paying job that looked "cool".

So I went to class in the bootcamp, did my work, tried my best, and asked and sometimes not ask. Sometimes, I was stuck in a problem but I would hesitate in asking, and then my teacher come up right behind me and point out the missing piece in my code. Or he would suddenly explain the javascript code I found in StackOverflow, but couldn't understand.

Same goes for my first ever boss. He founded a small company here in the Philippines and it's only us 6 employees working, so he's very hands-on. He teaches us everything he can. He encourages us to ask when we're stuck. And he gives us code reviews and tips whenever he has the time.

So to conclude, maybe I didn't have any code-defining moment. But I feel so blessed to be around people who teach me and pass their knowledge to me. It feels good to learn. And like how Ali Spittel quote Sandi Metz: "we can enjoy the pure act of writing code in sure knowledge that the code we write has use."

When I was a kid, I dreamt of building a Robot, I had no idea where to start and no mentors, that is why I thought I need to go to CS college. I couldn't learn programming (or even how to simply use a PC) before I made it to the university for many reasons.

Two years ago, I graduated from CS college, didn't build a Robot or even know how to, but this time I know where to start :)