Last week I hosted a Twitter Space where I gave 6 developers the chance to speak about their stories and tell us why they got into coding. Here's what they said:
Listen to the whole Space here
My story
So, why did I get into coding? So, it started in the late 90s probably. We had this old MS-DOS computer and it was full of nice games to play like Arkanoid and Lemmings. So, I had no idea how to run those games in DOS so I kept asking my dad to run them for me. At some point, my dad said "I've had enough. I'm going to teach you how to run those DOS commands". He did, and he was mindblown! Haven't gotten into coding just yet, just typing some commands. The fact that you just write something and the computer will do it, was mindblowing to me. Few years later, still playing those games, I said to myself: OK, what if I could make these games? What does someone have to do to make these games? And started with C++. Let me tell you this is a bad first programming language.But then I discovered Visual Basic. If you don't know VB, the editor has this fancy designer where you can drag and drop buttons and input boxes and stuff like that, and you can double click those and you can code events to it! So, you can have a button show a message box for example. And that's how I got my start! I've been doing this ever since!
Hilary Quinn
I was born in 1980. I really was not exposed to technology or definitely not coding. Not even smartphones, due to the era I grew up in. I was doing a course in Marketing and PR and one of the modules in that course was web design. We just had to make a couple of HTML pages. I was 24 at that stage, never being exposed to coding or web design. I just remember a magical moment, kind of like a movie, where my classmates were standing at the back of my chair just looking at what I just created, because they were finding it really difficult and I just... You know how some people find it really difficult to find the thing they are naturally good at? I had just found that thing! I always loved Marketing and PR but I never actually had a niche. I never had anything that was really creative enough. I love photography as well, so I found a cross-over between web development, web design and photography! I always put that as "being creative but at the same time enjoying technical restrictions". With photography there's a restriction with the art you can create so that's what I found with web design. It was a life-long career ever since!
Accessibility is another thing that interested me, back in an era where nobody cared about it. Yes I did make a Flash website website, I put my hand up! I learned over time that these practices are wrong, and accessibility is how we make the web better for everyone. Everybody should be able to access the Internet! The other thing with accessibility is that you never know when you are going to be the disabled person. You are going to appreciate it when someone made the effort to make that website accessible to you! I find that deeper meaning as well!
Baran
A bit about me: I'm 21 from the UK and I've got a bit of a traditional story actually, I've been around coding, computers and technology since I was a kid! I remember watching Apple events back when I was a lot younger back when you could only watch it from Safari. I was watching that and thinking "This is for me! I can get into something like this!" For our school, I was always into computing lessons and for GCSEs and A-levels! I always realised that it was something I was interested in, but I never actually thought of it as a career until quite late on. I went into A-levels and took Computer Science, Biology and Physics. They didn't really gel well together, though. I didn't know what I wanted to do so I kept my options open.
Then when it came to uni, I didn't know if I wanted to go or not. That's when I discovered coding but as a career. I realised I can actually get paid to do this! And so I thought "my not go into Computer Science!" That would be "you're doing this for real now!". So I took Computer Science, went to university, ended it this year in May with a First!
Went through a bootcamp after that which finds clients for you to work with. Trained for 8 weeks learning C# syntax. Got a client and that's what I've been doing the past 3 months!
Shubhangi
I am Shubhangi from India. I'm from a non CS background. I worked as a supervisor for an electrical department in an Indian government sector company. I had 25 other people to supervise and I didn't like anything about that job, although the pay was good.
I continued learning HTML, CSS and web development stuff. I asked my friends for reference, I got an internship and now I've been four years in tech! That's a small intro about me!
Patil Saurabh
I got into coding because when I was in middle school we used to have these exams and in one of them I got a very low score.
So I started exploring coding, like "what is this coding stuff?" I started with the language C++. Shortly after that I chose my major in computer science. Then slowly but surely I joined a security startup (a cybersecurity firm). Currently I'm working in a project I don't like because I like working with new technology but I have to work with 60 year old technology.
So I started working with some personal projects based on Blockchain. So that's me!
TreLyn
I started coding when I was about 15 years old back in the MySpace and BlackPlanet days. Started there with HTML and CSS building web pages for friends! You know, changing my background here and there, making it extra pretty. You know, all of the glitz and glam and things. That's when I fell in love with coding.
I got away from it because I thought I wanted to become a medical student. Ended up going to college first year, hated it. Switched to Biology, hated it. Eventually I completely dropped out.
From there, I started freelancing and building simple websites on Shopify and Squarespace for clients and in turn started bringing in more money! So that started me to brainstorm abgout how I can develop my skills to improve my clients' websites, the user experience and everything. So I thought "instead of just designing the websites, what if I could code the websites to give my clients a more personalised experience and better branding. So that's when I started diving into and learning HTML, CSS and Javascript. From there it just took off and I started freelancing with designing in 2013 just here and there, nothing special, nothing consistent. Until I got into developing. I'm part of #100Devs now which is an awesome program, which I've learned a lot! I'm now trying to get more comfortable with networking and talking in Spaces, and sharing my work.
Oyugi
I'm currently learning how to do computer programming using Python. I'm really getting fascinated to know how to turn a problem into a logical format. Currently I'm still doing simple tasks. Now I'm learning conditional structures, while loops and for loops. I haven't started working on serious projects. I wanted to get into a role of Data Science, and that's how I'm acquiring the knowledge of coding and it's fun! I'm getting to learn so many things: how devices work, how a computer gives us the results we see on the screen!
Thank you for your contributions and thanks for reading. See in the next one!
Top comments (2)
Seems Twitter messed up the transcription a little but everyone's points still make sense. Thanks for sharing this Savvas!
Thanks Baran! It's not a direct transcription, it's just me listening and typing and switching things up a little to make it more compact. So any mistakes you spotted, it's all on me. Let me know! 😬