High School CS
I still remember joining in bio-math group in my HSC just because I got some good marks in my SSLC. I was there in the group for a month and got to know that this bio thing is not for me and left it and joined Math-CS group. I'd say this is one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life.
So after changing the group, I attended CS classes which makes much sense than biology for me. The CS teacher was really amazing, in-fact I knew each and everyword from my HSC CS books, I was that much interested because of the best teaching of my teacher.
So I go home and study only CS and not any other subjects because I was so obsessed with it, I learned the core concepts of programming in depth in my school.
Covid & College
Even though I had some good understanding of programming, without proper mentoring and exposure everything will go in vain.
So when I joined college there was this virus spreading across the world and put me in my home for 3 semesters which I will say the best time, I was constantly learning something on that time, I forgot to mention that I am a Japanese Bilingual too. I too learned japanese on that time, I was well-versed in python back then and wanted to start my programming journey with backend development using python framework Django. I started learning Django by downloading a pirated online course and started learning it, it made no fcuking sense to me actually. I was like WTF. But still I wanted to learn it and sit there and watch tutorials and repeat. I stuck in tutorial hell even without knowing that it s tutorial hell, I did learn nothing from the tutorials other than the techical terms like routing,models,views,manage.py and whatnot. I let django go there and started focusing on my japanese thing since Django doesn't make sense. So time passes by I passed my first japanese proficiency test just by self-studying. Hear this, this is the funniest thing, I learned how to do webscraping as well, I don't remember how to do it now, don't ask me to work on it. When I was learning Django, I was introduced to HTML and CSS. I literally hated CSS and was telling to myself Frontend is not for me, please do remember this. There is a reason why I am saying this, remember it. So this is how my time went during the covid.
In college
I was staying 120km from my home to got to college, I never ever want to go to my college again, yes I am serious. It was the most shittiest time I spent, they taught me nothing literally nothing, the only thing they taught me is how toxic they are. There is no exposure there and they don't know how software markets work and what is the latest tech and don't even know what is going on outside, just remembering it making me irritating. I was stuck in tutorial hell even in college, I spent my 4th and 5th semester in tutorial hell where I tried to learn Java, Data analytics and whatnot. Then there was this friend who had some exposure and did a internship, constantly telling me to do frontend from my 5th semester. I was like meh frontend is not for me and was not doing it. In the mean time I was keep applying for internships in Internshala,LinkedIn and in many places which didn't help anything. Finally I thought to give it a shot on Frontend, and again it comes the TUTORIAL HELLLL!!!!!. Then time passes by.
Disaster and the Job
So time passes by, I went to home for a week, I took my mother in my bike for a relative home and when returning back we met with an accident and my mother got her hand fractured not fractured actually she got her bone broken inside, the doctors had to do a surgery. I had to stay with my mother to take care of her since my brother and my father had a business to run. So I took care of the whole house like cooking,washing, running errands and what not. I stayed in my home for a month. I got introduced to Scrimba.com,
the interactive platform to learn to code,I started learning Frontend from scratch, I sit on my computer at 9 am in the morning after all work and I only get up to use bathroom, this is how I spent the whole month. I really want to be that one month me :-), And then I got to knew about a startup in which they are hiring for a Frontend intern so I applied there, in-fact I applied there for 2 months before that and got rejected. But this time I was able to answer most of the questions and did my assingment very good. I finally got the internshipafter this 3 years of struggling, I started working on a blog engine, I saw the product grow from nothing to a seamless experience blog engine which is I now writing on. Yes I worked in the development of this webapp. I learnt a lot from working on this product. I actually got an offer from one the BIG 4's but did reject it joined here, I think it all worth the risk now. I am learning a lot.
Conclusion
I just wrote the path I went, I didn't tell how frustrated I was, how depressed and how scared, this could have been avoided if I only had good mentorhsip or good exposure, There were many road in front of me I didn't know which one to choose and went through all the roads and found my own path.
Now you people tell me am I a self-taught developer or not?
