"What made you want to be a developer?"

When I saw this topic on the list of proposed article topics for week 1 of the #4articles4weeks writeathon, I immediately brushed it off because I didn't know where to start from!

Then I saw the other proposals, 😭neither do I have a job nor have I ever failed an interview( NO I've never even been to an interview! ). Guess I have to go with this one then...

So... What made me want to be a developer? Let's find out!

My story

What? 😶 I can't possibly talk about my wanting to be a developer without giving you little bits of my boring life right?

Then

Usually, in high school, some kids know what they'll like to be in the future and others pretend they know. I was part of the latter. Anytime someone would ask me about my aspirations, I'll respond with "I want to be a medical doctor" since most of my friends were interested in medicine too.

Guess that wasn't meant for me...because, after high school, I passed a competitive entrance exam into an engineering school. Now I can't stop appreciating my parents for 'forcing' me to write that exam (emphasis on the now 😅)

During the first two years in school, we got introduced to the basics of algorithms and programming in C language. It never appealed to me at all, I never saw the use of it. All I knew was I needed good grades for that course.

In my third year, I chose the computer engineering department. You might be asking yourself why. Why would I choose this department when I know nothing about tech and probably do not like it? I am the eldest child from a humble home this prepares me for a whole load of responsibility and as such, I have to think fast and act fast. I did my research and realised there are a lot of opportunities in this domain. Why not give it a try?

It wasn't even the end of the first month of school and I regretted my decision heavily.

We all know this one person that has been programming their whole life and was waiting for this opportunity to showcase their talents to us puny little humans ...and my class was full of such people!

Oh, the pressure!

While others in my class were excelling, I didn't know where to place myself. I was beginning to doubt if I actually belonged there.

One time, one of dad's friends asked me "what are the characteristics of your laptop?" 😂 I thought this was a trick question. I replied sweetly "Uncle, it's a Windows machine".

He told me I was wrong( Oh, the embarrassment! ). That night I had to research what characteristics of a laptop are to avoid future embarrassment. I suppose he was wondering what sort of engineering they teach me at school.

Now

Withstanding all this, I learned to make the abstract between what others do and what I do. I learned to not doubt myself and also collaborate and learn from my peers. I have developed a keen interest in software engineering and each day I learn a new thing.

When we are given projects, I love the process of leaving from nothing and then arriving at a working result. Each phase counts from analysis to design and then the implementation.

Every time, I discover a new software that picks my interest like a website or an application, small project or large project, I admire it and the people who build it and wonder if one day I too can participate in building software that will appeal to hundreds of people in the society.

Developers are awesome!

I want to be an awesome developer!

Summarily

• I will not lie, my first reason is there are plenty of opportunities out there in software development and tech in general. 😂 I'm not ready to miss out on such opportunities plus I want to have a role to play in the tech industry.
• The second reason is I've grown to like it, I love battling through the challenges encountered while working on a development project, I love the process, the technologies and the never-ending learning.

Thanks for reading

We've come to the end of this article. If you read till this point, thanks for staying. Now that you know why I wanted to be a developer, I'm also interested in what made you want to be a developer if you do not mind sharing it in the comments.

This article was written for the #4articles4weeks writeathon which is also my first writeathon so I'm super excited!🥳