Developer story - path to Python
Tags: watercooler, programming, python
Published: 2021-03-11 09:15:23

Somehow, I became a Python developer and I like it.

And now, some context. I started my work career at 19 (I am 33 now) right after I finished technical-oriented middle school (high school) and decided to get some real experiences in the big world (and also make some money). At that time, I already coded a lot of small personal and school projects mostly in Borland Delphi([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi_(software))) and in C (because I was crazy and at that time, it was cool to know this language). In my first job, I actually work mostly as an admin rather than a software developer and that was the reason why I quit after 10 months for a junior developer position in another company.

My first real developer job was about developing desktop apps for internal usage in Borland C++. During 2 years in this role, I also started learning Java since I saw it more and more around me in the community (note: language itself was not that difficult for me but it turns that it was hard for me to understand the whole ecosystem). After 2 years, the company where I worked starts to have troubles connected with salary issues, so I decided to look around for another job. I find an interesting job which was titled as a Java developer. It turns that it will not be directly Java development rather coding in proprietary frameworks and languages based on XML and Java environment to customize a solution for customers (you can imagine as SAP implementations) however, I decided to get this job (at the end, they offer a decent salary for that time and my level of experience).

It turns to be a great decision to take this job for my career. Long story short, I am still with the company. The key benefit of this company was (and still is) for me, that I am surrounded by very experienced developers and wise people which push me gentle forward. I was very happy for long years, but it happened that mood in the company gets bad and I decided to the left company to escape it, but I was told I can return whenever I will want.

I was out of the company for 2 years where I worked in two other places and monitor externally what happening to my original company. The situation changed, grumpy people left the company and it was the right time to get back. It was like a return home.

During these almost 11 years I had the opportunity to work on many different roles (solution engineer, technical lead, support engineer), and in each of these positions, I touched on various projects and technical solutions. Started with proprietary languages, later I work more with Java and Groovy. I was asked to build 2 front-end apps for internal usage (which turns to apps used even by our customers). For those, I picked JS + React. Since I am with the company for so long, I got the opportunity to lead whole implementation projects for our customers which was interesting from a point of soft skills, but after a couple of these projects, I decided to move myself to product development (pure software development) team focused on cloud solutions.

I start worked in this team in January 2021 and right after I started to maintain and write new Python lambda functions. During this, I found that I like coding in Python itself. I met this language before, but I never used it on daily basis and I realized that I like it most of all languages I used before. And that is my story to Python. I can't say that I am a pro at Python, but since we will continue to use it in more solutions, there big chance I will reach high skill later.