Why Did I Decide to Study Software Engineering?

Hello World! (That’s a bit cliché, isn’t it?)

So, why did I decide to study software engineering? I was introduced to code in the form of HTML when my best friend showed me some of the simple HTML she had learned. I was instantly enamored. I thought that it was so cool that she could type some HTML and alter the text however she wanted to, add a link, add an image, change the cursor, etc…

Fast forward to high school, junior year, I believe. They were offering a half a year course called Intro to Programming. My best friend and I jumped on the opportunity. We studied Visual Basic for half the year. I still loved it. My only regret was that for my final project I decided to try and recreate the game Pong. In the end it worked, and I thought it was really cool that it worked, but since Visual Basic didn’t really lend itself to that, and I only had less than hour a day to get this to work from a very beginner level. My teacher had to help me code the bulk of it, he would ask me what I’m trying to get the code to do, and often times had to write the code and just explain to me what it was doing and how it was working. Not much, if any Visual Basic had stuck with me, however some of the core concepts, such as variables, boolean logic, looping, and conditionals, have. Unfortunately after that, I let life, and myself, get in the way of pursuing my passion for learning to code. My computer broke, and I never replaced it, I started working retail directly out of high school and learning to code got put on the back burner.

We fast forward yet again, to the beginning of this year. In February, my boyfriend and I moved from upstate New York to the greater St. Louis area, in the state of Missouri, where he was originally from. I had been a Scan File Coordinator at my old job, to put it simply I was responsible for taking care of price changes. I wasn’t having any luck finding that type of work. I didn’t want to start over somewhere from the bottom, heck, I hardly even enjoyed the work I had been doing in the first place! What I wanted most was to find work that I enjoyed doing. This personal dilemma wasn’t a new one for me, but the job search really brought it to a head. I started a little self-searching, and I thought, “What do I enjoy doing?” I remembered learning to code.

As luck would have it, we had bought a computer for my boyfriend to game on some months ago. I started searching how to learn to code. There was a lot of good resources, and good advice all over the internet. I determined that I needed something fairly structured to keep myself on track. I found Flatiron’s Online Software Engineering courses. I decided to take their free boot camp prep courses. I loved it. I was reintroduced to that passion that I had when I was a teenager. I decided to apply to the real thing, full time. Currently I’m wrapping up week 2 of Flatiron’s Full-Time Online Software Engineering boot-camp, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision to start this journey.

So, you may be thinking, “Okay, I get it, you love learning to code. But why do you love it so much?” Even if you’re not, I’m going to answer that question. What is it that I love about code?

• I’ve always loved to create. I love making art. Something about the process of watching something come together from nothing. Although I struggle when things are too open ended, when there is no right or wrong. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but with code there is at least 1 hard line. Is your program doing what you set out for it to do? Coding allows me to create but there is structure, and rules. If it’s doing what I want it to do, I at least know I’m headed in the right direction.
• I love to learn. Computer programming is a vast field, according to a quick google search there are at least 700 programming languages. It is ever expanding and advancing. I’m the type of person who can get sucked down the rabbit hole learning about just about anything, reading random articles and watching YouTube videos. There is never going to be a shortage of things for me to learn in this field. The well will never run dry, and that is an exciting prospect for me.
• I love the challenge. There are no diminishing returns from this. The more challenging something is for me to understand and implement, the greater the exhilaration when I finally understand.
• We live in a technological world. Code is everywhere, it is integral to most of our daily lives, running behind the scenes. If there is something you are passionate about, there is almost certainly a way to contribute to as a software engineer. I’m not sure what kind of problems I will solve using code, but the possibilities are limitless.

There you have it. That’s how I decided I wanted to learn Software Engineering. I’m not sure where this path will take me but I can tell you I’m here for the journey and not the destination. The things I learn along the way are sure to contribute to a life long passion for learning to code, and I’m excited to see where following that passion will lead me.