Everything began at home. I was fortunate enough to have a programmer for a father, and grew up learning bits and pieces here and there. The first programming language I was introduced to was Logo, an educational programming language that was used to draw graphics by giving sets of instructions to a little robot called a turtle. Frankly, I don’t remember much of those days, only really remember programming for Robot Arena: Design and Destroy. After I spent some time learning website design via Dreamweaver since Dad setup subdomain and a server at home for us to host and learn websites. Instead, I figured out I could install a proxy there and bypass web filters.
Fast-forward to college, I got accepted for a Pre-Vet track, but am absolutely terrible at Chemistry, and could not do Organic Chemistry. By year 3, I realized I needed a plan for post-graduation, and decided to learn coding. Being self taught, that meant I needed to get as much resources as I could by myself. One of my first courses was Programming for Everybody, a free course offered on Coursera. In combination to that, I spent a lot of time on Codecademy, which provides a good hands-on lab practice. I find that hands-on is really the best way to learn any new concept. Playing with and figuring out all the errors and problems yourself is the best way to cement knowledge in your brain. From there, after tackling all the courses I wanted to learn, I spent time learning how to use Github and Git, then started working on my own personal projects.
Personal projects are a great way to showcase your knowledge, and prove to potential employers you can code. I built a solver for Pokemon Shuffle, which was a simple brute force Java application with a basic UI. The grid was stored as a series of arrays, and then positions were calculated for every possible swap, as well as the following turns. Variable values for each icon was also available to calculate the turn that generates the highest score.
Just after graduation, I took up a position working at Hostgator’s call center for tech support. Not the most glamorous position, but it paid decent, $14/hr, and got me additional experience. There, I picked up a better understanding on domain names and how DNS servers work. As well as setting up websites from scratch and with install scripts. I picked Jr. Systems Admin for a job mostly since it offered some weekdays off for interviewing, as well as a potential path for growth should I not get an application. I worked there for a month before a recruiter got me into an interview with Hewlett Packard Enterprise. There, I aced the interview and that got me in. After that first programming position, applications only became easier, less rejections, and more interviews.