Hey internet people, just wanted to introduce myself and give a little backstory as to what I'm doing here. My name is Tim Mahoney and I am from the great state of New Jersey where I've been a professional chef for the past 20 years was laid off last October. Before I was laid off though I had already taken an interest in coding and was just going through the basics with some online learning apps. On my lunch breaks I'd use SoloLearn to help me get the gist of things like html, css and even some programming languages like java & python. Waaaaayyyy back in the day I used to work at a computer company that did a little bit of everything; pc sales, component sales in large quantities, R&D, I think they even dabbled in software for a bit. Unfortunately I was in my early 20's and didn't realize the potential of working in the IT industry, hey we all do dumb shit in our younger years.
Fast forward to today and I'm currently on my second semester in community college working on my AAS degree in computer programming/computer science, working through @freecodecamp, taking a buttload of Udemy courses, I just attended Codeland earlier this week, & I've got a couple of mentors pushing me to get my first developer job. It's been a pretty wild ride, a few struggles here and there and even though I have the feeling of defeat at times there's always a little light shining at the end of the tunnel. The deeper I get, the brighter the light shines.
Top comments (3)
I know exactly where you are at right now and our stories seem to be parallel in some ways. I also dabbled in IT back in the late 90's and was not mature enough to appreciate it. Instead I did a bunch of random things through my 20's and part of my 30's. At the age of 35 I discovered programming and my love for it.
In a way you discovered what I did. I was a commercial swimming pool / water-park plumber. That is where I learned systems thinking. You have learned Systems thinking by being able to take ingredients and design recipes and managing an assembly line of processes to pump out dish after dish at a quick pace.
I gotta be honest, being a plumber at a water park sounds awesome. I'm imagining a Spiccoli type character from Fast Times At Ridgemont High
No it's not. I built them. I never got to actually use them myself. The dream and reality are 2 different things lol