Web_Developer_Chronicles_1_Starting_a_new_chapter_as_a_Web_Developer

I started a new chapter in my life in January this year, which was having a second son. My wife and I feel incredibly blessed and couldn’t be happier seeing the interactions our sons are now having at such young ages. However, this life event prompted us to re-evaluate the plans that we had made a little over a year ago when we decided not to buy our first home, but to rent instead. We planned on getting my wife through the remainder of her education so that she could start her career as a Speech Pathologist, at which point I would return to school for Computer Science to pursue a career as a Software Engineer. 

Soon after my son was born, Apple released Swift Playgrounds on macOS, and I decided to complete it(I had picked it up briefly in the fall on iPadOS). I found it to be engaging, easy to understand, and it just made sense. I began to think of an App I would want to make to test my capabilities with this new-found knowledge, and then came the stay at home orders here in California. 

My wife, who works at a local school district, was told that they wouldn’t be coming back in for the remainder of the year and was told the same for Fresno State. Without these commitments, we now flexibility with our child care we otherwise would not have had, and it also got us thinking about what we could do with all this extra coverage when it came to our kids. After having just learned the basics of Swift, my wife reminded me that of articles we had read about tech companies hiring Coding Bootcamp grads without a higher education due to their ability to teach the latest tech. We spent several hours over a couple of days discussing the pros and cons of having me pursue something like this with a two-year-old, a newborn, and all during a Pandemic. After a couple of weeks of studying different courses, companies, and availability, I found a program at a company that would work for us in terms of pace, commitment, and price. 

I started this next chapter in my life on April 15th of this year, and I couldn’t be more pleased. I started off feeling eager, nervous, excited, and unsure of myself with the pressures of it all. This self-doubt came from my previous attempts at higher education when I didn’t have a sense of direction. Even though I now felt purpose, I couldn’t help but think about how sure I was about my sense of purpose when I was younger. During that time, I felt as if I was doing what I should, and felt like that was all someone needed to be successful. In the time since, I have come to learn that to feel this sense of purpose, you have to believe it, and to do that, you have to do what you WANT, not what you SHOULD. 

Since starting this journey at Thinkful, I have been more engaged in my professional development than ever before. I have learned so much already in such a small period. I still can’t believe that two months ago, I couldn’t have even told you what HTML, CSS, or JS stood for, let alone read or write it. I have already created my first interactive Web App using jQuery, and have created a webpage for my portfolio, both from scratch! I am learning about API’s now and think it’s fantastic, the world of possibilities that exist with them.

I am determined to see this through and complete this course, but know already I don’t want to stop there. I already have planned to teach myself Python, and then after that master Swift. Beyond that, I am open to learning so much more now that I know that this path is the one I mean to walk. I hope to stay at Apple, but realize that I may have to leave to begin my career as a Web Developer. 

Writing this gives cause for me to look back on my life, thinking of my ignorance in technology 10+ years ago. That is something I think about every day at work and the motivation for me to go above and beyond to help my clients. Often they lack in their knowledge regarding technology, and I get a glimpse of my younger self. I grew up in a small city in a large farming community with older parents, and technology was practically a non-existent part of my life. Because of that, I didn’t know much of anything, including just the basics of computers. I have taught myself practically everything I know about technology, and am proud that I have come so far, and am not close to stopping.