“What would you like to do with your life?”
Do you remember as a child being asked that? Its always a question you feel like everyone around you has an answer for and expects you to know. The only answer I could ever think of was along the lines of “Something I enjoy”. In truth I feel this is the most universal answer anyone could hope to give. When this question is asked in regards to what you would like to do for a living, the crux becomes what can you do valued by an employer or clients that you yourself enjoy doing? This makes for a very difficult question to answer, and for a lot of us that answer changes as time goes on.
I’d like to begin with a little bit of history about myself. I was lucky enough in early adulthood to have some friends who taught me a trade, I became an electrician. The significance of this at the time was lost on me, having a trade meant that I could take my skills with me wherever I went and that I would in fact always have a job in this field if I desired. The only problem is although this trade did provide for my family, I never really enjoyed being an electrician. I think the situation of falling into a career out of necessity is something a lot of people experience.
A New Direction
I think I’m probably of the last generation of people that will one day recall “I remember a time when there was no internet.”. I certainly remember when it came to my house. Suddenly the machine in my parents room that I used for playing solitaire, minesweeper, and doing the occasional book report hosted a whole new realm of possibilities. All of which looking back…were cringingly slow! But I do remember the amazement of everything this machine could suddenly do. A specific memory will always be connecting to my friends computer and using it to remote back in to mine, to try and remote back into his, and laughing hysterically as both of our computers crashed with the effort. Another fun thing we used to do was play a text based game called MUME (multi-users-of-middle-earth) which shockingly can still be found here. I’m not trying to claim I was a wiz kid but I was certainly enthralled by technology from my earliest exposure to it.
Fast forward to myself as an adult, I eventually came to a point where I had decided to switch career paths. I knew that I enjoyed computers and after a bit of research I discovered the CompTIA certification track was a good way to break into the industry. I got my CompTIA A+ certification and got a job as a technician for a company installing/maintaining networks in hospitals.
I thought I’d made it but boy was I wrong! After a year the company lost their contracts with the network of hospitals and suddenly all of the experience I had maintaining the proprietary systems they had was worthless since I no longer had access to them. It dawned on me that while I had broken into the field of technology, I needed a trade within it that I could take with me anywhere and even develop myself.
This lead me to look at software engineering. After doing a bit more research I discovered the online school Flat Iron which was a coding boot camp with a great reputation. A few weeks in to contemplating if I should “take this leap” the pandemic hit and made my decision to enroll easy. This was after all, a trade that could be done and learned remotely! As of right now I am a week in to the program. I am keeping pace with the somewhat rigorous curriculum, and am actually really enjoying it! The possibilities of code apply to SO many things that if I ever found myself longing to do something else code would probably be able to take me there.
It All Begins With Ruby
I am not lying when I say in just a week of this course the concept of a whole new world has opened up before me. This journey has begun with the programming language Ruby. This is a dynamic language that first needs to be interpreted into bytecode before being converted into machine code that a processor can run. Because of this two fold conversion before entering machine language, the syntax in which Ruby is written is incredibly easy to understand (well…sometimes). One of the handiest tools I have learned about in this language is the usage of methods.
A method in Ruby is a process which you define that can be performed on an argument. In other words if I had to perform the same function on a different number or variable over and over again in a program, the best practice I have found thus far is to create a method that does this and feed it that number/variable as an argument. The return of this method each time will be the desired result.
Another useful concept I have learned about in regards to programming is a collection known as an array. These can be used to store a multitude of objects under the same name enabling you to select each individual one by the index that they are stored under. Such a simple concept can have a multitude of useful applications, the most fun of which I have thought of would be creating an x and y axis in a text based game like the previous one mentioned. Like I said, I am choosing to learn this because I intend to enjoy it.
Where I Currently See This Going
I know that a career in this field will not simply fall in to place after I finish this boot camp (not to say I wouldn’t jump at the opportunity!). The tools I am learning at Flat Iron are setting the foundation for what I will need to learn to meet the requirements of whatever project I embark on. This could be anything from creating software to help the day to day processes within a company, freelance web development, mobile game development or a host of other things I might do. One thing I know for sure at this point is that the possibilities of coding extend beyond what I can currently imagine, and I am very happy to see them stretch out before me as I continue.
