Academy Xi Reflection Exercise

I decided to study software engineering because it was time for a change.

One of my first jobs was in sales. From that experience, I knew I didn’t want to do sales. I then used my sales experience to get a job in communications. From that experience, I knew I didn’t want to do comms, so I used that experience to get myself a job in digital marketing. I’ve been working in digital marketing for the last year, and gosh. If I had to do that job for a few more years, I think I would become a withered shell of a man.

When it comes to my career, I sometimes feel I just got on board of the wrong train.

When I think back about the experiences I’ve found most fulfilling, I think of 2013–2018. In 2013, I tried building a game, just for the heck of it. I thought it would be a hobby I could use to distract myself from the studies I was doing at the time. It became waaaaaay more than that. I really started to enjoy the challenge of coding because it felt like solving puzzles all day. I also realized that I loved building things! Every experience has its challenges, but these were challenges that I really liked!

I tried to take a stab at becoming a game developer. It was a great experience, but it didn’t work out. One of the main reasons I didn’t continue down the software developer journey after that was because I only knew one coding language, and that language was too niche to be of value. Furthermore, I’d driven myself broke in the pursuit of my passion, so I didn’t have the resources to retrain or go back to school. I realized that I’d have to get back to the ‘real world’ and find a job in an industry which I had lots of experience in... hello again, sales, comms and marketing :(

Fast forward a few years, and I’m now in a position where I can afford to get retrained, and this time, I want to learn more coding languages so I become more versatile, and develop a broad skillset of value. This is the industry I’d like to work in, and I can finally get to pursue this path again. I haven’t been this excited for awhile!

Now…time to talk about this project.

One of my key learnings from this project is that ‘I am not alone’. I noticed that whenever I googled a coding problem I was facing, there would always be a ton of other people who have faced the same problem, and written about it! Software development seems like a great community to be a part of, because it seems whenever someone is facing a problem, there are always people with more experience willing to help them solve it.

The process I would follow for solving problems is:

1. Take a stab at it
2. If that fails, google it
3. Take another stab at it
4. If that fails, find a youtube video which will teach me more about the subject
5. Take another stab at it
6. If that fails, drink some tea
7. Repeat

It may not be the best problem solving process, but it sure keeps me well hydrated!

I don’t have any ‘what could have been improved’ suggestions at the moment, but that is something I’ll keep reflecting on. It has been a great exercise to do, and I appreciate that I had to do it independently because it gave me a much clearer idea of what I do and do not know. I now have a whole bunch of questions I didn’t have before, and I’m sure I’ll be asking about them soon.

Thanks for the read!