Why am I pursuing a career in software development?
Tags: beginners, webdev, programming, devjournal
Published: 2023-01-01 01:42:05

In October 2022 I started on a software development bootcamp with Northcoders. My final week of this incredible journey falls on the first week of Jan 2023, a perfect way to welcome in the New Year. I start 2023 on the lookout for a junior developer role equipped with a host of practise based software development skills thanks to 
Northcoders.

### So why did I choose software development?

1) **I love using technology** 

Mine isn’t a story of falling in love with programming at 7 years old.. rather it’s been a gradual process that has brought me here. I never delved into “coding” or “programming” per-se up until recently but I have always taken a liking to technology, I’d go as far as saying I am a self-confessed **technophile** when it comes to technology as an end-user. Off the shelf ready to use software has always been a large part of my life, I have always enjoyed learning, adopting and finding new ways to utilise it in a personal or work capacity.

2) **Circumstances cause a rethink**

What I did not consider or do, is learn how to code my own scripts / programs / software even with my continual interest in technology. Regularly reading about the shortage of software developers in the public domain eventually led me to explore this field in more depth. I dabbled a little here and there with some very basic scripting, HTML and JavaScript but never really considered changing career paths up until I came across... software development bootcamps.

The timing of this discovery was perfect if anything as I was at the point in my career where the trajectory did not look appealing and I was actively looking into options for a career change alongside all the other things one has to consider with such a move.

Keeping my options open I decided to investigate a few different IT roles which had a low enough barrier to entry and had viable re-skill options for me to complete. I considered the following paths:

- IT Administration
- QA Testing
- Software Development
- Data Analysis / Engineering
- Digital Marketing

3) **The working environment**

But I kept coming back to software development - Why? The day to day work of designing, building, fixing and maintaining software was the most appealing out of all the above roles. The working conditions, especially the flexibility was also appealing. Additionally, once I had developed strong foundational knowledge I could start working on areas of personal interest / build useful personal projects of which I have a few ideas for.

4) **Future proofing my career**

Lastly, there is constant evolution in the technology sector - the software development field itself is so vast and perpetually growing that one can spend a joyful lifetime working, learning, creating, exploring and sharing. Not to mention all the important off-shoots such as dev-ops, cloud-engineering, cyber-security etc that one can pursue after some well-grounded experience.  

### **A note:**

**“*Give a person a fish, and they will be hungry again tomorrow; teach a person how to fish, they will never be hungry again”***

Why I chose to study with Northcoders:

- It is a well established and respected boot-camp, the testimonials speak for themselves both from past students and employers who hire Northcoders graduates.
- The curriculum is designed around employer needs, more importantly they work on building strong foundational knowledge thereby equipping us graduates with the ability to adopt different technology stacks.
- It is local to me, which allowed me to attend in-person at their Leeds office every so often.

I’m thoroughly grateful to the teaching team at Northcoders. it has by no means been an easy journey starting with little to no knowledge to equipping me with the necessary skills for building these two projects on my own - a [back-end project](https://github.com/moshkh/BE-Project-NC-News) and a [front-end project](https://github.com/moshkh/fe-project-nc-news). I'll be finishing Northcoders by working on a full-stack final small-team based project due to be showcased on the 06/01/2023. It has been a truly rewarding experience and I will be leaving knowing **“how to fish”**, how superb is that!

### ***And finally,***

Thank you for taking the time to read about my journey to becoming software developer :)

If your reading this and are on the lookout for a junior developer, please do get in touch with me! I’d love to explore and consider any relevant opportunities!


![Musab Hussain Banner | Musab Hussain, a software developer, writer, lifelong learner and solopreneur](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/8gxtw4ag0fyn0o8zqapp.jpg)