The first week of my transition into a developer
Published: 2023-09-01 01:28:19

I was previously a finance student, very passionate about finance and hoping to become an investment banker and potentially build a FinTech start-up. I followed the typical path for years, joining startup clubs at the university, working on ideas, pitching to investors, competing in various competitions and receiving grants to build MVPs. And from all those wins, I thought I knew everything... turned out what I didn’t know at that time was that it’s very difficult to find the right technical co-founder. And it’s even more difficult to communicate what’s in my head to others so they can build it for me. 

After this realization, I first gave myself a try to be a little closer to the product development process by working full-time in the product team in a company. Being in the team, and working on business tasks was also nice but I felt like something was missing. Yes, I could see the developer build things and be there as a part of the team but for some reason, I didn't get my hands dirty, I didn't get to build it myself. 

From all of those feelings, I decided to self-taught myself how to code starting with front-end during my free time in the summer alongside my full-time job in a product team and that is where I found myself - I LOVE BUILDING THINGS. 

Knowing how to code opens up the opportunity for me to bring my ideas to life and it fulfills me so I keep looking into online courses and materials. I spent almost a year learning how to code in my free time and I first thought I did a decent job working alongside the instructor when I studied online. In fact, learning by myself didn’t take me so far and I couldn’t solely build everything I wanted without learning the right way to do so starting from the beginning - to have the right development plan.

Knowing what I lacked, I wanted to learn from experienced teachers who have been through projects and understand deeply about the developer career paths so I applied to the web development program at Cornerstone International Community College. What interested me the most about the program back then was the opportunity to study for one full year and then take another year of co-op internship - a perfect combination of learning theory and then putting it into action in a real job. Throughout the course, I expect that I will be able to work on real projects and have extensive knowledge that will be useful for my future career as a full-stack web developer. If I become very good at coding then I could one day build a technology or product I think can create an impact on society as I used to dream about. 

When I’m writing this article, I’m in my first week at the college and I love it so far. My class is in the evening with a small group of classmates from diverse backgrounds who share the same interest in coding. We start with very basic foundational knowledge such as intro to computing, what is the network, and how that relates to web development, command line, and Git. Because the professor started by explaining the theory, and then giving us a set of practice problems so we could try it by ourselves. In the end, he also shared with us his experience using this knowledge for his previous job, so we could get a clear picture of what would it be like to work as a developer on a daily basis. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge and energy from friends, and professors already and I hope that I can keep this dynamic and my enthusiasm for the whole course. 

It’s still a long journey ahead though but I put more effort into it so I can be a decent full-stack developer. The difference I can spot so far in learning alone for the past year compared to learning in classes with friends and professors is that the latter helps a lot to develop my professionalism and teach me how to work in teams, communicate and share knowledge with others - this helps me understands some concepts better and know how to use it.

That’s all I wanted to share for now. It was an amazing first week after I affirmly transitioned into a developer career path. I plan to write more and share not only my transitioning experience but also what I have learned about web development which might include techniques and learning tips. Stay tuned!