Why I Decided To Learn Software Development
One of my fondest childhood memories getting a Nintendo 64 for Christmas. I remember constantly thinking about it. School days couldn’t end soon enough, running errands with my parents seemed to take forever. All I wanted to do was to sit at home and play.
At the time, it was EXTRA exciting because not only was I six years old and everything was exciting, but video game systems were still quite new. It was my first time I saw something that could physically control the pictures on a screen.
Around that time, my parents bought our first computer. I don’t remember much about it, except that one day we had a large desk and an eggshell colored PC tower sitting next to it. I don’t remember even knowing what it was, but we eventually learned that there was a bunch of games like Galaga, Snake, and a generic golf game loaded on it. That was all it took for me to want to spend as much time on it as possible.
I wish I could say from that point on, my curiosity drove me to learn everything about computers, but that’s not the case. I grew up in a pretty small town with small schools that lacked resources (at the time I didn’t know this, but now that I’m older and work with high school students, it’s pretty apparent my old high school lacked in a lot of areas). We had computers for using Microsoft Word and sending emails, but we didn’t have any classes teaching any kind of basic technology. The most technical thing we ever did was find ways around the firewall so we could play browser games.
That didn’t change much throughout college. I was always excited about technology, but more so from a consumer perspective than a creator perspective. I remember when the first iPhone came out, but you had to have an AT&T account in order to get one…I had Verizon. My roommate at the time had one and I would spend forever going through us the app store downloading every pointless app we thought was cool (it was the first app store, so everything was cool but most apps were pointless).
Eventually, I received a bachelor’s degree in biology and went on to Chiropractic school. I’m really interested in all things related to physiology and performance, so it was the perfect path for me to take to start a professional career in the human performance world.
I finished grad in December of 2016 and started my career. I work with all types of people from weightlifters, powerlifters, tennis players, as well as general population clients.
Working with athletes was what I enjoyed, but working with the general population was what paid the bills. After a few years, I started getting bored doing the same thing every day and needed something challenging.
One of my favorite things to do was look through PubMed, find studies related to whatever topic I was interested in at the time, then make Instagram videos explaining the topic. That eventually led me to start recording and editing a podcast.
I also started watching some YouTube series’ on C++ and how to create a game engine. I had no clue what any of it meant or how it worked, but I just enjoyed watching people live-stream themselves working on projects and explaining how to solve problems. I also started really getting into videos on hardware and basic computer architecture.
Over time, I started to get really serious when it came to technology, especially the software engineering part. Then, at the beginning of 2020 COVID 19 hit, and California enacted their safer at home orders.
When Los Angeles shut down and I had extra time, I started doing Codecademy courses. This was my first experience actually coding on my own even though I had been watching other people do it on Youtube for almost a year prior. I fell in love with the problem-solving process and found myself thinking the CodeCademy courses constantly, just like when I was a kid and couldn’t wait to be home so I could play Nintendo.
When it became clear the world was going to be very different because of COVID, I decided to make the best of it and change careers. I applied for the Flatiron software engineering boot camp and started at the earliest available date. My goal is to work in video game development and work on personal projects related to the training and performance space.