My Coding Journey So Far

Last fall, I quit my job working as a casualty insurance underwriter with the intention of making a career change. As I contemplated potential career paths for myself, I sought to boil my strengths and passions to their most basic elements. At my very core, I deeply enjoy building things as well as the process of learning in and of itself. This base assessment informs my desire to become a software engineer, an endeavor in which learning and creation are inextricably linked.

In college, I had taken two of Stanford’s introductory courses CS 105 and CS 106a. These gave me a taste of basic html/css/php as well as object-oriented programming in Java (now taught in Python). They were fast-paced and engaging (in the context of a 10 week quarter system, I suppose everything is). Although I studied Science, Technology and Society as my major, the programming courses I had taken certainly piqued my interest in programming and left an indelible impact on my approaches to problem-solving.

Shortly after beginning my learning journey last fall, I had the incredible fortune of meeting and beginning to work with a selfless mentor. Up to that point, I had been feeling the constant nagging itch that I had been going about learning things in the wrong order, or learning the wrong things altogether. Having the support and guidance of an experienced programmer as well as some level of accountability has been a game-changer.

Prior to our meeting, I had been learning Python basics through How To Think Like a Computer Scientist as well as Jose Portilla's Udemy Course. My mentor initially had me work through a fantastic book called Think Unix, which gave me a practical understanding of Unix, touching upon topics like shell scripting, networking, and a plethora of useful commands.

From that point, I have completed Learn Python the Hard Way and MIT 6.0001, both of which have given me a strong foundation in basic Python/OOP, while also giving me an into to the Flask web framework. I am now working through Miguel Grinberg's Flask Book as well as MIT 6.0002 to continue improving my skills in both Flask and Python. 6.0002 also touches on algorithms, which I am hoping will serve as a foundation for later books/courses on the topic while also improving my ability to create efficient programs.

While this is a rather cursory overview of journey to this point, I'm looking forward to expanding upon specific topics in further detail. I look forward to being able to look back in a couple of years and track how my thoughts, goals and processes change over time.