My journey into software
My interest in computers started at an early age when my dad brought home his first desktop. My brother and I would fight over who was better at pinball on Windows 95. Luckily, I started playing around in some of the Microsoft programs at that early age (very literally playing around), but it gave me a very basic understanding of how programs worked. Being surrounded by computers and people who interested in computers shaped pretty much my entire life.
While I always have used computers, and have been pretty good with them, building software was never something I was really all that interested in until high school where I took a BASIC programming course, and dabbled in Java. I found it interesting, but not interesting enough to really start considering it as a career path. So, for college I decided I was going to be an elementary school music teacher! That lasted 1 year.
After struggling for several years trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, I ended up graduating with a business degree. However, during my last year of college I took an HTML and CSS course, and I loved it. It was the first time since learning my first instrument where I felt like it was something I actively wanted to pursue with my life. I decided to get a job instead. That said, while working the job, I kept learning a bit on the side through CodeAcademy. I mostly brushed up my skills in HTML and CSS, but also started diving into SQL as well (since an understanding was needed for the job).
Why did I need to know SQL? I was working as a Product Manager, which is basically the person who works with the client to figure out what they need, and then relay that to the engineering team. This is where I really started working with the software engineers and my interest really ramped up. The thing I always enjoyed about learning software was the problem solving aspect of it, and understanding the thought processes of the engineers always had me intrigued. Over the two years I was working as a Product Manager, nearly the entire time I was more interested in the software side of things than the stuff I was doing on a daily basis.
I decided to commit and make the jump after my last major project. The release was successful, but I was missing the feeling of accomplishment that I had felt in the past. That feeling had been going away more and more after every release, and I realized it was because I was just doing stuff that I wasn’t passionate about or in love with. I really wanted that feeling again, and so I started brushing up on some of the code I had learned in the past and realized that it was something I needed to pursue.