Question of the Week: Share your story

What moment made you decide you wanted to learn how to code?

Please be specific and give context :slight_smile:

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For me it isn’t really just one instance. For context, I’m a preschool teacher by trade, and I started to become disillusioned with the whole school thing way back in 2016 for multitudes of reasons. My sister-in-law (a lead engineer now) always told me how much I’d enjoy coding and programming. I was always too afraid to try because I’m terrified of change but also I thought I wasn’t smart enough. Then I got to visit her at her company in SF, and fell in love. Not just with the idea of coding but also the company community itself. But I was still too afraid to start, and too broke to figure out how to go about it even with help (preschool does not make money).
Anyway I moved out of L.A. in 2017 and could not for the life of me keep a job in my new town-first I got hurt, then the pandemic hit and I was just plum out of luck. I realized I had to change my life. But I was still too afraid. And then my wife had a series of very bad luck and I realized I had to do something or I would be doomed if something worse happened to her. So I recently decided I had to stop dilly-dallying and found Codecademy and I’m enjoying myself so much more than I would have thought.

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Come to think of it…I think a dancing robot video made me want to learn… :rofl:

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So I had been interesting in technology and the inner workings of software for a while. I don’t remember exactly how, but I learned about Codecademy in 2014 and signed up in July. Here I had my first coding experience when I took up Javascript in CSS on CodeCademy because they seemed interesting. I loved the course but I didn’t have any useful application for it, so I turned to other things and didn’t look back.

In 2018 I did a research internship where I had to program an image analysis script in Javascript! In relatively little time I had regained the bulk of what I had learned in 2014 and it really helped me. What’s more, I loved having an actual useful solution to work on and working like this! After my internship I decided I really wanted to stay in practice by using CC regularly.

For my job (as a MD), I couldn’t use it for more than a year or so, but by doing the occasional lesson I kept the coding fire going. Then in 2020 I started doing a PhD and now I’m really using python and JS for tasks in my work on a daily basis. I really love it and couldn’t have done it without CodeCademy! :slight_smile:

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When i found this book about coding in my bookshelf

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When my son was born. I used to do a job which I enjoyed and which I studied for. But when I became a father sudanly I realised I do a terrible job. I knew I can do better thing, have more responsibilities and have a bigger sallery. I wanted to be a good role model for my son. So I quit my job - they gave me a good reason - was 7 months uneployeed, work on my skills (I was learning Python and C# - not my cup of tea) and endup in one game studio where I enjoy every minute of the day!

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Last year right when places started to shut down, I stumbled upon a coding video on YouTube. I don’t remember exactly what the video was about or from who it was. But I found the video very interesting. Though I didn’t really think much of it until October. I somehow found CodeCademy then, so I signed up for it. Now I’m learning Web Development.

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Right after watching the movie hackers!!
Angelina Jolie makes it look so â– â– â– â–  good. Lol :slight_smile:

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From I was a kid and got my first Amiga 500 :smile: :rainbow: Oh the happy days with AmigaBASIC, only RAM and floppies to work with. Endless loops were something else back then :skull_and_crossbones:
Ended up studying pharmacy for long forgotten reasons but the code burns in me and I yearn to work full fledged in a tech job. Now trying to step up the game with Codecademy etc. to see if it can boost the career into the magical realm of tecchy stuff.

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I took a “coding” mandatory courses in college when I was doing my Industrial Engineering degree, where they introduced us to c++ and compiling. I was just doing what the teacher said I had to, but I never got why and what should we do after the course with it, what for? I then finished college and went to work and decided to try also a bit the field of social and language sciences, sometimes I used to do some moocs on edx. Before the pandemic I took one on linux and wanted to learn more about cibersecurity. When the pandemic hit I lost my job left the country I was living in, and tried to look for a new job but no way; in the meanwhile I did the Crash Course Computer Science, and then I started to understand better compunting and got more interested, so I bought a RaspberryPi in which I learned scratch and a bit of python. When I was done with the manual, I wanted to learn more python and iI remembered I had seen/heard at one point about Codecademy, so I came to the site, took the where to start test and decided to do the Data Science path, so here I am learning with you guys and one thing leads to another so I am not only learning the path but also taking other skills and doing some projects. Happy coding everyone!

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when i was failing my classes in high school and i needed something to show for so that i dont get disowned

I watched a Youtube video about a really big hacker from some time ago. By sending people a single email he hacked a lot of computers. It was a while ago so I dont remember a lot of it, but it seemed really â– â– â– â– â– â– â–  cool.
Now, I am not really good at coding at all, but it’s still kinda cool being able to do anything at all.

In the 90’s as a kid I probably did my first programming through bat files. Just creating single letter bat-files to run specific programs from MS DOS C:
This was mainly to help some of the kids on our class to use the PC.
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many years later, working with excel/financial things. Hey, I do no have to write the formulas over and over again, excel can record what I do AND I can then rewrite what was recorded!
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later again, working as project manager for deployment of new financial software. Our IT partner failed again and again in developing the changes needed in our ERP system. After some advices I purchased the book “programming ERP system” => I you want something done, best do it yourself? Sometimes yes. It is a wonder what a good book and the ability to google can achieve :slight_smile:
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open programming course (mooc?) offered at the local university
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codeacademy now
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I am still not sure if I can say that I have started really programming, as my work etc. main duties lie elsewhere, and I only know a little (but am learning). On the other hand the continuous learning and using the skills you have makes it already. ?

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My aim is to start my own business and I would like to make sure I can control each aspect of it. Plus I do not want to rely on anyone to run my website when starting out. I also thought, in case imy business was not successful, I will have a skill which I can use to look for job while I look for ways to be a successful boss. The thing is, coding is actually easy and very rewarding.

When I got bored of all the games I was playing and thought of making my very own epic game.

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so after switching to coding what career path do you choose? and what was your previous background related to computer science?

what path do you choose? front end / back end or full stack?

I’m doing front-end, but I’m later hoping to learn back-end to move into full-stack.