My interest in web development started the same as most people – I wanted to create a website and was completely in over my head. Tinkering with Squarespace was ok, but I wanted to build something that was mine. Turns out I wanted to build a lot of things, from my little startup ideas to system improvements at work. So my interest was initially practical; learning code is undeniably useful and would give me the tools to build and create.
After delving into self-taught code, I quickly realized programming was going to be more than a hobby for me. The challenges were real and hair-pullingly frustrating, but the fist-pumping joy of figuring out a problem was beyond thrilling. Learning code itself engaged me in ways that aren’t immediately obvious. I am a lifelong foreign language learner and was pleasantly surprised to find that learning Ruby and Javascript fired off the same cylinders as learning German or French: you need the vocab, grammar and syntax to express yourself. Also, the logic games and thought pretzels gave me an intellectual challenge that I crave and hadn’t found since college Econometrics. Learning to code became addicting and took on a life of its own — researching one seemingly simple problem would open a pandoras box of information and remind me just how much I have to learn. And I really, genuinely wanted to learn it and understand it.
So, why Software Development? Because once you start, you can’t really stop. You’ll never be done learning, you’ll never be done building, and I don’t plan on quitting anytime soon.