How I got into programming
I made my name as a writer and journalist through sports. After playing Division-1 basketball for four years at Louisiana Tech while simultaneously running our school newspaper, becoming a sports journalist after college seemed like a logical step.
I wrote for the Associated Press, Times-Picayune, Baton Rouge Advocate to name a few. As I came into my own in the profession, careers in journalism became fewer and further between.
As my health insurance was taken away from every employee at my company over Christmas, my partner half-heartedly mentioned to me how he thought I’d make an excellent software engineer.
Quickly, I became immersed in a new community through Career Karma. I was learning and playing games on Grasshopper. I started tutorials on YouTube and started applying to bootcamps.
I’ve spent the past decade either writing or teaching English. For five years, I taught ESL in China and Spain while learning Catalan, Spanish and Mandarin along the way. I see coding and programming as an extension of these theories: I’ll be learning new languages while helping entities talk to each other. This time computers, whereas before I was helping children or students.
This career change is something I never saw coming, but I’m already so glad I decided to do it.
The day I was accepted into Flatiron was the most excited I’d been since I learned I was going to be a walk-on at LA Tech to play basketball. It signals a sea change in my life.
Finally, I will be able to build the things I want. I look forward to building software synthesizers (VST), making NBA salary cap games and hopefully video games and continuing to score music for commercials and movies. I hope that my interests align with my new programming skills to land my dream job. I doubt that will come immediately, but I’ve already seen how each of my interests informs my capacity to learn and vice versa.
As with anything, I believe it’s about balance. All I know is that at the moment, I see a new future for myself. I’ve already overcome the early barriers of remembering what it’s like to thing in abstract concepts. I’ve emerged out of the first week feeling renewed. I have a new purpose.
This feeling won’t last forever, but it’s a time I know I will look back on once I’ve attained my first job as a coder.
