Well I think it's time.

I want to talk about my experience with programming and where I'm at in my journey and just my geenral overall thoughts on everything I've seen, learned and experienced.

Beginnings

I originally got interested in Web development during the "Myspace" days of old when you could essentially custom your own layouts and css add JS effects and so on. THese were the good old days when I was a young teenager and thought I was the coolest kid ever by using the most basic of css and js on my profile. My friends would all ask how did you do "this" or "that" can you do it for me?

Well long story short this faded away soon due to family obligations, school getting a part time job and so on.

Moving forward

Let's jump ahead a bit and talk about my early adult life. I decided to give things another try and get back into web development since I was already around 20 years old. I didn't want to be behind the curve... I took some online classes, I can't even remember what at this point class I took. About a week later I got a promotion at my job, which entailed a lot of out of town travel and OT with better pay of course. I had a house I was renting and a girlfriend that was quite difficult to handle at this time and I ended up falling off the web development train again...

Recently...

I decided to take a hard stance on learning web and not letting anything get in my way I was about 27 at this point in a job I was particularly happy with and my current relationship was falling apart as well. Not a better time to make a better life for yourself right? Well I decided to start with sites like free code camp using youtube to look up programming videos and to learn things. I even paid for a team treehouse subscription at one point. I just dove into it working 4 days a week 10 hours a day and then studying on my days off for hours on end between 3-9 hours a day on my days off and even some time of the days I worked. Of course this was just Html and css which I actually spend probably like 2-3 months straight on learning and building very basic static pages...

Javascript...

I still remember my first foray into using JS I was watching a Youtube video on creating a basic landing page that had a pop up modal... I remember learning the document.getElementById('modal').addEventListener('click', => { // do something here })

Wait, what was this "=>" ? an arrow function? how does that work.. What is a function how does it work.. what is scope? var vs let vs const... Oh no... Wait what is this, has my life been a lie??? I can't program none of this makes sense to me at.. Am I only able to use html and css which is even programming?

Okay.. Let's calm down here yes js is hard but I can do this. Slowly I started to learn the difference between, var and let and const. I learned idfferent methods of selecting dom elements. I learned arrays even used forEach to create a pop up modal slideshow. I could build a basic website and add some interactivity to it.

This whole span took me about 6-9 months not so remarkable, I couldn't keep up the previous studying habits due to major life changes this time. I didn't fall into the trap I did the last 2 times though, this time I kept at and kept on working I might have taken a few weeks here or there without learning or even writing a single line of code but I was still watching tutorials online and reading reddit / medium articles online. This however doesn't translate into real world skills.

Today

Where am I now? Well I still consider myself a junior developer by all means of the word more experienced than I was 6 months or 1 year ago but still a junior developer no matter the case. I have built my own blog site this one here your reading this on. I built it with GatsbyJs which is just ReactJs using GraphQl, I have built my own Ecommerce site using GatsbyJs as well. A few static sites and some API projects that were a lot of fun. I can use HTML, CSS, Js, React, Gatsby, Bootstrap, GraphQl, API's and of course git for version control.

Why am I talking about this?

Well at this point I know this will be a longer than usual post but I'm currently applying for developer jobs and going through the trenchs updating my resume. Working on my portfolio and creating new projects and adding them to my portfolio and updating old projects with new UI and new features. Making changes other Developers have suggested and fixing minor bugs that I know are there and most people will probably never see.

I feel like at thsi point It's just a matter of continuing to improve my skills and adding nwe prjects and features. I think I might take some time to learn React deeper and maybe even throw in something like SQL or php just to have even more tools upder my belt. It can't hurt so why not? I guess I'm writing this just to get it out in the open where I'm at and what I'm experiencing.

If you'd like to join the community and make your own posts on here and share your experiences Reach to me VIA social media or Email and I'd be more than happy to feature your writings!