Reminiscing On My Software Development Journey

It is funny how whenever I learn how to use a new technology, I always ask myself

When will I be confident enough to start building with this technology?.

I asked myself this question when I couldn't make websites responsive on all devices, and now I can build responsive websites without any issues.

Then, I started learning bootstrap, I asked myself this same question until I built a website with it by just studying their documentation one Sunday after I got back from church.

I got so good with bootstrap that it hurts me to see people say it can't do certain things, I'd volunteer to do that task using bootstrap which was said was unable to get the task done.

Do not say a technology is incapable of doing something, instead say you don't know how to get that task done with the technology. Not knowing how to do something with a technology does not mean the technology is incapable of getting the task done.

I've mentored a lot of developers on how to build responsive websites without having to jump through the hurdles I had to jump.

I knew what it was like to struggle with these technologies and wanting to understand them badly.

I guess this made mentoring others much easier for me.

I asked myself this question again when I started learning JavaScript, in fact, I gave up at this stage. I told myself software development wasn't for me.

Then I saw a tweet someone posted telling another person to register for an internship.

From the tweet, the so-called "internship" was actually a competition and not meant for beginners.

I also applied for the internship, what will I lose even if I get evicted at the beginning of the program? nothing, I'd lose absolutely nothing!

By the time I saw the tweet, I had already stopped studying and given up.

Two weeks went by and I didn't get evicted. I had submitted all my tasks before deadlines.

In the third week, we were splitted into teams and my team was to build five hotel website templates.

I led the sub-team that developed three out of five of the templates we were given in two days.

After we were done with our task, we were free for the week so we decided to introduce ourselves and get to know each other.

You're surprised, right? Yeah, I know. The internship was so intense that we didn't have the time to start introducing ourselves in the beginning because no one wants to be evicted.

So, while we were getting to knowing each other, somebody said he had to google some of my code to understand what I did.

This person was somebody I was looking up to because my JavaScript knowledge was zero at that time and the code he googled to understand was just CSS.

I thought everyone coding JavaScript had already mastered CSS, so I was surprised why he had to google to understand the CSS code written by someone who had given up and stopped studying.

It was at this moment I told myself I cannot give up just yet. During the internship, I saw a lot of people who were looking up to me also.

"I can't let these people down by giving up", so I said to myself. So after the internship I went back to JavaScript and I conquered, no still conquering, I mean. But I'm comfortable and confident enough with vanilla JavaScript now.

I'm learning #React now, and I'm asking myself "when will I be proficient and confident with it?"

This was what I asked myself last week before remembering I once asked myself this when I was struggling with CSS media queries, then bootstrap, and then JavaScript.