JavaRush /Java Blog /Random EN /My long road to being a programmer
Максим Караваев
Level 40
Санкт-Петербург

My long road to being a programmer

Published in the Random EN group
Finally, it's possible to add your own success story! It is not as fleeting as some who find work in six months, but it is just as real. Opportunities are different for everyone, so if you have been unable to find a job for two years and think that you are deprived of some mythical gift, do not despair, you are not alone :)
My long road to the position of a programmer - 1
Greetings to all fellow students and colleagues! When I first visited CodeGym back in 2015 and read the success stories, I thought I couldn't wait to share mine. And yet, I still do it, which means everything is achievable. I want to tell so much that it's time to write a book, but I'll try to be as brief as possible. I sincerely hope that no one will die of boredom, wading through so many letters ... At the end of January of the distant 2015, I decided that continuing to work in my current place, waiting for the boss to suddenly become generous, and I will live well is a hopeless task. In my youth, I was engaged in programming, but after leaving the army I abandoned it. It so happened that there it is unnecessary. Then life twisted, spun, I couldn’t get a job as a programmer and didn’t try (I thought there were only smart mathematicians there). In the places where he worked, "programming" was called the layout of a one-page site, turning on the printer or setting up the Internet. I lived then in Smolensk, I earned an average of 10-12 thousand a month, I didn’t really worry, I thought that it should be like that, because everyone lives like that. In 2012, he moved to St. Petersburg, found a job with a salary three times higher than he had previously. And before the beginning of 2015, believing that now I was definitely successful, I stopped thinking about the prospects again. Awareness began to come after a while, and only shortly before my 29th birthday, I realized that at such a pace, nothing good in life threatened me - only daily trips to a tired job, handouts from the boss in the form of a salary increase of 2 thousand a year, life from paycheck to paycheck to old age (and it was scary to even think about it). The area in which I gained experience was so narrow that if he were suddenly fired, he would become unemployed for a long time. And so, in January 2015, I decided that I needed to do programming. I used to do something like that too, but I quit after a few days. This time everything was serious, I thought about it and realized that programming for me is the only chance for a normal life. I did not torment myself for a long time, choosing a language. Given the popularity, object-oriented and market demand, the choice fell on Java. The first step towards achieving the goal was to buy the book “Java. The Complete Guide by Herbert Schildt. I started reading it avidly in the evenings, on the subway commuting to and from work, working through examples at home and at work. It didn't take long to master the syntax, perhaps a week, since I was already familiar with the basics of programming and understood all sorts of language constructs. But when acquaintance with the OOP paradigm began, difficulties began. Around this time, I began to realize that studying from a book is rather boring and, for the sake of interest, I rummaged through the Internet in search of some sane courses. And how lucky that it was then that I stumbled upon CodeGym! The course captured me so much that the first 10 levels were completed, God forbid, in three weeks. And then another luck - discounts in April in honor of Cosmonautics Day, as a result of which I managed to snatch an unlimited subscription for only 5,000 rubles. From that moment on, I simply did not get out of training: I solved problems in the evening at home, in the morning I read more about what I had studied in the subway (all with the same Schildt, and then with Eckel). At work, in his free time, he again solved problems, I read again in the evening on the subway. And so day after day. Before the end of the year, I planned to take a course, then an online internship, and in early 2016 start looking for a job. But, as it turned out, it is not always possible to follow the plan. A sufficient amount of material to sign up for an internship was completed only by April 2016, i.e. exactly one year after the purchase of the course. I paid for the required subscription, downloaded the test task and ... went nuts, to put it mildly. Git, Maven, Spring MVC, Hibernate, some front-end frameworks, MySQL… Everything I heard about in the learning process, but thought it was still oh so far away. And now I need to figure it all out in just a couple of weeks. The authors of the course claim that you can figure it out in a few days. But I didn't succeed. One would think that I'm a fool and I shouldn't be a programmer. But I decided to turn it out differently and settled on the opinion that I’m just going too deep to figure out how this or that framework works. And I really couldn't help it. Trying to complete a test task on various tutorials from the network, I was faced with the fact that I practically did not understand anything. Mechanical rewriting of the code is unlikely to contribute to development, and if there was any error when launching the application, I was completely lost where to dig, completely confused, looked for another tutorial and started all over again. Naturally, I did not have time to create a finished application by the beginning of the internship. But I started reading books and manuals on Maven and Spring, understood in general terms how everything works in them, mastered Git and, oh gods, finally got an account on GitHub. But still, this failure with the internship demotivated me, until December 2016, I continued to study, and only before the new year did he again seriously take up the test task. Then I came across an excellent book “Spring MVC Beginner's Guide” by Packt Publishing, reading which I wrote the application step by step. And it contained everything, absolutely everything you needed to know to successfully complete the TK, except for working with the database and Hibernate. I had to figure it out myself, but I again felt the strength, and quickly fastened the database to the running application. Thus began the year 2017 and I successfully passed the test task to participate in the internship, which began in March. But it just so happened that at the current place of work I could not work on the project, because. the ports of Git, Maven and others were blocked, so it remained only to study on weekends and evenings. The declared 4-5 hours a week for mastering the material was clearly not enough. Here again my tendency to delve into details came into play, but I believed that writing code that seemed to work, but it was not clear how, would give little results. So I started falling behind. During the internship, HRs began to call, because resume is included in the database of applicants. In early April, I went to one interview, it somewhat demotivated me, because in my opinion it turned out to be a failure. Although I was given a test task, and I began to work on it for the sake of interest, I no longer counted on this place. Then the summer began, I began to write less code every day. I was afraid to go to interviews, I constantly thought “I’m not ready yet”, “I still need to learn more”. I was already thinking about buying another course on GeekBrains and even, God forgive me, enrolling in the Mail.ru online university. But in mid-August, after returning from vacation, I went to work and realized that I was already so fed up with everything there that I simply couldn’t physically anymore - soon I’ll just openly send everyone to three cheerful letters. In order not to lead to sin, I began to respond to all interesting vacancies from the hh mailing list. No hassles, no cover letters, just press "Respond" and come what may. If they call, it’s good, but if not, then there’s nothing to be upset about. If I fail, it's okay, an hour of shame and continue to persevere. But it worked out on the first try. One day I got a call back from T-Systems, a vacancy which I responded to shortly. It was a three-month full-time internship, no experience required. The interview went off with a bang, I left it very inspired. Just the same week I got a call back and a few days later they sent an offer. And already on September 20, I started my first working day as a junior software engineer. December 11 was notified that the trial period had passed. It's very cool to realize that you have achieved your goal, after this you can even inadvertently relax. But you should not do this. Just evolve, just grow. It would be possible to tell a lot more, but the opus has already turned out to be quite voluminous. Therefore, I have to put an end here. If I forgot to talk about something important, just remind me in the comments, and I will definitely tell you. All the best in your studies and work! that you have achieved your goal, after this you can even inadvertently relax. But you should not do this. Just evolve, just grow. It would be possible to tell a lot more, but the opus has already turned out to be quite voluminous. Therefore, I have to put an end here. If I forgot to talk about something important, just remind me in the comments, and I will definitely tell you. All the best in your studies and work! that you have achieved your goal, after this you can even inadvertently relax. But you should not do this. Just evolve, just grow. It would be possible to tell a lot more, but the opus has already turned out to be quite voluminous. Therefore, I have to put an end here. If I forgot to talk about something important, just remind me in the comments, and I will definitely tell you. All the best in your studies and work!
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