My Journey into Programming

By: Tim Winfred

Being a programmer makes me feel like a magician, which is exactly what my answer was as a child when people would ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

When I was younger I really enjoyed building things. Whether I was folding, taping and stapling paper together to create tube-like shoots to drop marbles down, or sitting down at the computer building thrilling rides on Roller Coaster Tycoon or fantasy houses on The Sims, I was constantly creating.

In the era of MySpace and leaving “♥” as a comment, I spent a lot of my free time crafting a profile that I felt showcased my personality by using the simplest HTML tags.

Unaware of the possibilities the world of programming offered at the time, I focused my studies on craft and art classes in high school and then transitioned to creative advertising and computer graphic design in college. Although I was still feeding my creativity, I ignored my passion for building and my childhood dream of being a magician.

In 2011, I landed an internship with a tiny startup called Fresh Produce Locator. I spent hours and days working with the CEO to craft a business plan that he could use to present to potential investors and developers. Although we had a working site that was generating income, we were unable to grow because there were so many ideas that we were unable to execute without the money to pay for a programmer. I got to see firsthand that no matter how great ideas are, they are nothing without the ability to turn them into reality.

My first post-college job was at a small public relations agency called PRxDigital. As one of the youngest staff members at the company, I was the main source of knowledge when there were any questions about how to do things online. I quickly became a jack-of-all-trades and found myself doing everything from designing websites using Wix to writing blog content and social media advertisements. Although I thrived in every challenge presented to me and loved the diversity of the role, the lack of a more experienced mentor left me craving something more.

Around the same time, I had fallen in love with travelling and couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Two years prior, I had taken my first plane flight when I booked a 10-day trip to England to visit my brother, who was living on an Airforce base about an hour or so south of London.

Between my restlessness at work and the lingering travel bug, I was craving another international adventure. Then, in early 2013 I started to see Facebook posts from a friend who was living in South Korea. She was teaching English to elementary school students during the day and was spending her free time exploring the country and its rich history. Out of curiosity, I sent her a message to ask her how she got the job and she told me about the huge market for international English teachers around the world, particularly in Asia.

While I was doing my research into this potential new opportunity, my brother had called me to let me know that he was going to be spending another year abroad. This time in South Korea. I had already been considering the possibility of moving to Korea to teach, so it felt almost too coincidental. And just like that, six months later I was moving into a studio apartment in Anyang city in Korea's Gyonggi-do provience (just south of Seoul).

Although I loved every moment of my year in Korea and learned so much from the culture and people I met, a few months in I started to miss the creativity of my previous job. So, to feed my creative need, I started building a WordPress website called Dragaholic.com. The site was a news blog that featured drag queen entertainers from around the world, with an emphasis on entertainers who had competed on RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Dragaholic quickly grew from a side project into a full-time job, and by the time my year in Korea was over it had amassed over 13,000 Facebook fans and more than one million pageviews. I had spent countless hours working on the site, often sacrificing social and cultural experiences, and decided to return to America in an attempt to turn it into a profitable business.

After a few weeks back in the States, I quickly realized that I didn’t have the programming skills to make the site all I wanted it to be. WordPress was great, but once again I had ideas that I was unable to turn into reality. I decided to take a full-time job and continue working on the site as a side project.

Then, out of nowhere, the site went blank in May of 2015. A vulnerability with one of my WordPress plugins allowed a hacker to wipe everything off of the site. After spending 15-months of my life pouring my heart into the site, my worst nightmare had come true.

I struggled for a few days working to get the site back up and eventually had to put up a “We’ll be back soon” message because I didn’t have the knowledge to figure it out. About a month later, I came up with a solution to get some of the site back up, but I had lost numerous articles and there were random broken photos and links across the site that didn’t make for a good user experience.

After a few months of grieving and contemplation, I decided to put the site up for sale. I had admitted defeat and was ready to let go of “my baby.” Then, in late 2015, while I was working as a Social Media Specialist with Shutterfly, an LGBT media company called Q.Digital decided to acquire the site from me and make it a sub-channel of their largest news site, Queerty.com (see queerty.com/Dragaholic). I was happy to pass it off to a company with such a rich history of media in the LGBT community and they even offered me the opportunity to continue to write for them, which I gladly accepted. And then, a few short months later, they made me an offer to join their team full-time and lead the company’s marketing efforts. I gladly accepted.

My role at Q.Digital quickly became another jack-of-all-trades position and I found myself doing a varity of tasks, including designing web page mockups for the sales team to use in response to RFPs. I learned how to manipulate the company’s sites using the DevTools in Google Chrome and was also building pages in WordPress again. I loved creating webpage mockups, often going into a trance-like state while working, and I was always so intrigued seeing them come back as fully-functioning pages.

In January of 2018, after nearly two-and-a-half years at Q.Digital, I received an acceptance offer to attend Coding Dojo and return to school full-time to pursue my interest in programming. After more than a month of contemplation and self-reflection, I knew that I was making the right decision. I scheduled a meeting with my boss and gave him a one-month notice, hoping to make my transition out as smooth as possible.

As a 28-year-old still paying off his college loan debt, I realized I was giving up the security of a monthly income to pursue my passion. My parents questioned my decision, but they still supported me. I also remembered that I had felt a similar fear when I decided to move to South Korea, which turned out to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.

When I stepped into the classroom on that first day, I knew I had made the right choice. My inner child was rejuvenated, and my creative energy started flowing like a river following a heavy rainfall.

After four months of hard work and numerous late nights of studying, as of June 2018 I could officially call myself a programmer. Coding is my passion. I am now able to turn all of my ideas into reality and am living my childhood dream of being a magician. Although I wish I had these skills in 2011 when I worked for Fresh Produce Locator, and again in 2015 when I could only take Dragaholic so far, I am proud of my journey and everything I have learned along the way.

To sum things up, I leave you with a quote by Winston Churchill that has recently given me a lot of inspiration and perspective:

“To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.”

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Please send all inquires to timwinfred@gmail.com.