My Programming Journey
Tags: programming, softdev, javascript, beginners
Published: 2021-05-16 02:24:18

> One thing that I can say for person who just started coding  is, pick some programming stuff you enjoy outside school or work. I know a lot of software engineers, being burned out in the field. I think that is because the joy of programming is being sucked at work.  This may be so vulgar of me, as a 22 year old because I still have  a long way to go, but finding programming stuff that I enjoy doing seems to cancel out the feeling of boredom and/or difficulty of work. Moreover, nothing beats the joy you get by working WITH people you vibe  to.

**Background**: I came from a non-science high school. Our class, did not have any programming subject, so I really entered college and took computer science with zero programming knowledge.  

At the very first, our class was introduced to the C language, and made some applications via the terminal, but that was it - one semester. I cannot even remember the syntax for C now. Then we had java. It is the main language taught at school and through it my classmates and I learned the solid foundations of programming.

I can still remember, I was reading a Java book and was going along with the tutorial code. I was so amazed by the GUI that popped out, turned out I was copying the java swing components, and that was when my fascination for Java and programming in general, started.

Looking back, I think one thing that I loved most in this journey is the people, my classmates and friends. My classmates and I would go on an overnight and do all those Java coding needed for our projects (*aaahh, nostalgia* XD). The picture below is us doing Java overnights. I am that weird smiling person at the back. (*I miss them huhu*)
![My friends and I doing Java overnights](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/heijd2yga8by2y6sxpx5.jpg)

I wrote my thesis with java and lots of other group projects that a professor can think of. Almost 90% of my college life is java. 

This is me during my graduation XD. Thank God!
![My Graduation Picture](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/86doiz172q28q8phnzd7.jpg)

I started working immediately after graduation and my first work is also as a java developer, and the company is using Java Enterprise. It still my same old, same old love, java. But I felt that I am being caged. The Information Technology is always in a fast-paced evolution and I am stuck with it. That is why I actively searched for ways to go out of that cage, and I stumbled upon [The Odin Project](https://www.theodinproject.com/). It guides you through your web development journey. With it, I started to actively create hobby projects, basing inspiration from odin's curriculum. Currently, I am working on the full Javascript developer path. You can check out my github portfolio [here](https://github.com/fatrixienicolieopetina).

I am not sure why I started to love the curriculum for some reason. Probably because, the side projects I wrote can be deployed without the need of complex configurations? I am using github pages as it is free and very convenient, and I can always boast my work from there. 

I am doing front-end development in my free time. Java will always have a special place in my heart as I have said. It opened doors for me. 

I hope I can also work with front-end more in the future. Currently, I am exploring javascript frameworks like react and angular, google's free online database firebase and some css frameworks like tailwindcss and bootstrap. 

That is my six-year old programming journey so far. As I continue, let us see where it will bring me.

One thing that I can say for person who just started coding  is, pick some programming stuff you enjoy outside school or work. I know a lot of software engineers, being burned out in the field. I think that is because the joy of programming is being sucked at work.  This may be so vulgar of me, as a 22 year old because I still have  a long way to go, but finding programming stuff that I enjoy doing seems to cancel out the feeling of boredom and/or difficulty of work. Moreover, nothing beats the joy you get by working WITH people you vibe  to.

Thank you for reading my very first post in this platform.

Regards,
Pat