How I Became A Web Developer
Tags: beginners, community, webdev, programming
Published: 2023-02-13 12:01:49

It's more likely that you know me from Twitter than any other platform, where I've been actively engaging and sharing content for a while now. But I recently decided to start blogging after some encouragement in tweets from other bloggers. I intend to deepen my knowledge in different areas of web development through it, to improve my technical writing skills and make some fortune from content creation.

### How It Started

In the beginning, I was just fascinated at how computers could do a whole lot of calculations and I wanted to know how they work. But I wasn't able to explore much until I got my own personal computer 💻 (PC) when I was a freshman at the university. Then I got to know that it's called programming and that's what's behind it all. 😲 Though, it wasn't my first time coming across the term.

### Concepts

Then I wanted to learn to code 😎 and I searched on youtube generically for that and the [C language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_programming_language) was introduced to me. I was alone on this quest and not aware of other programming languages, let alone the tech community. I remember installing [Code::Blocks](https://www.codeblocks.org/), my first ever IDE 😎, and then I started writing C.

Most of the things I did in C were algorithmic problems, putting aside the fact that I was just getting familiar with common programming logic and features like:

-   [if statements](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Statements/if...else)
    
-   [loops](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Loops_and_iteration)
    
-   [variables](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/JavaScript/First_steps/Variables)
    
-   [data types](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Data_structures)
    
-   [functions](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Guide/Functions)
    

### Getting My Hands Dirty In C

Afterwards, I began solving problems that involved printing patterns of "*". That is, drawing different shapes in asterisks. Triangles, pyramids and the like. It might seem straightforward at first glance, but getting the logic for those wasn't easy as I was new to the space. I watched many tutorials that solved those problems but being able to devise the logic independently was a hard nut to crack. Experienced programmers might probably have a heck of a time with those problems too.🤷‍♂️

### JavaScript and Web Development

As I progressed through the semesters of my studies, I had less and less time to do programming because the workload turned out to be way more than in my first year 😩. So I stopped any serious programming pretty much till my final year (2018) during which I picked up [JavaScript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript).

Later on, I started learning on [freeCodeCamp](https://www.freecodecamp.org/) where I covered quite a lot on HTML, CSS and more JavaScript. And I was also invited by a friend to my first tech conference organised by Facebook, who is an iOS developer now 😎. At this point, I realized that there was a huge tech community around me and it felt cool to be around like-minded people. Ever since I became passionate about community and I attended almost all tech events I knew about.

### Quitting A Job

After studies in my home country, grads are obligated to participate in a year-long service programme. But I didn't as I had intended to continue my studies in Germany 🇩🇪 and I wanted to commit to it immediately 😐. So this meant that I wouldn't be able to work as a developer, which I desired, till I arrive in Germany 🇩🇪 or even more because I was occupied with language courses. Oddly enough, I was able to find a position with a startup company but we parted ways after a couple of months due to tech stack issues: at the core, they used WordPress and I was looking to do stuff in HTML, CSS and JS; my discontent was irrepressible.

### Working On My Portfolio

Due to the coronavirus pandemic 😷, I wouldn't be in Germany till about 2 years later 😭. That was probably the toughest period to live through. I committed that period nonetheless largely to the language courses and self-learning. Also did quite a bit of working on some portfolio projects so that I don't become rusty, which I continued here in [Mülheim](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BClheim). I intend to work here and continue to grow as a developer but for now, I'm getting some paperwork done!