I came to Finland to study as an industrial automation engineer. I found it difficult to do any tasks related to coding. After 5 years of university with a degree in hydropneumatic automation, I only had experience with graphical programming, where there were blogs and simple switches. But it was very difficult and without joy. Once, I even took a computer course in high school, but I was intimidated by Delphi and quit! In 2015, between the first and second years of my Finnish master's degree, I had a lot of free time. Somewhere in the middle of summer, I came across contextual advertising for JavaRush on VKontakte. I thought it was interesting because I didn’t have to pay anything. And I didn’t know a single normal programming language. I opened it, started reading and doing exercises. Some childish tasks, I thought. But then they became more difficult. I took the book "Thinking in Java" from the university library, which I read before going to bed. It only made my sleep better, by the way. And every day for the rest of the summer I programmed in Java and read a book. I was very happy then that I could create something, even simple console applications. By September, I realized that I had the opportunity to gain subjects related to programming. But it turned out that only courses on electronics and automatic systems were offered in English. It must be said that in Europe this means difficult programming in C/C++. Naturally, I had almost no knowledge of this, but I signed up anyway. There was also a Java course that was only available in Finnish. I wrote to the teacher and said that I really wanted to program. He accepted my request. I still continued to study every day on JavaRush. Then I decided to buy a subscription for $100. But in the end it was the best investment in self-education.
Rough electronics and graphical Java
Even then I realized that I needed to develop a schedule according to which I would study. So I always came to the university, sat in the library and studied, sometimes went to classes and came back again. C++ was difficult, unlike the already familiar Java. But the Finnish course was entirely based on self-study. At the beginning there were tasks similar to JavaRush, but soon tasks related to JavaFX began. Then for the first time I will be able to make a desktop application with a graphical interface. My delight knew no bounds. In the same course, we did an assignment in a team where we had to use Git with BitBucket. Then I realized that my daily activities were bringing results. Programming the application logic was interesting and clear. One of the tasks was to parse xml of a network of cinemas throughout Finland, and then create a graphical interface. Working with interfaces took me into web programming. Then I discovered web technologies. There was a whole new world here with layout, HTML, CSS and JavaScript, which was as simple as possible compared to the strict types of Java. But it was even more interesting for me to create a bot, which was subsequently written in NodeJS. Then, of course, a reasonable question arose? How to make a chatbot accessible on the Internet. This is where I met Heroku. I can recommend it to anyone who is just starting their journey in cloud technologies and implementation. The free version is quite generous in making a non-loaded site or bot available on the public network.
Freelancing, master's degree and startups
It was also funny that after six months of programming, I even managed to work as a freelancer. A friend wrote on VK that she needed a Java developer. As a result, I parsed sites with children's clothing and put them into Excel files. There I had to learn such a strange thing as XPath. But I ended up doing a couple of projects in some huge monolithic application. I was still programming 7 days a week, but now even for some little money, which was motivating. And then I was able to program a Lego robot in C. It had to drive along a line, recognizing the color black in the fastest possible time. In the meantime, I had to write a thesis and complete my master's degree. Then I plunged into job search. I compiled a resume using some guidelines and started sending it out to companies. I received many refusals, maybe 40. But I remember one case well. A company in Berlin sent me a real test task. It was necessary to know algorithms and data structures. It was practically a new world again. Studying again, I thought. After scrolling through the courses and looking at the site with the algorithms, I sent the working version. But that time I was refused. I graduated from university in June, and a myriad of opportunities opened up that I had not experienced. But in the sauna, as happens in Finland, I met an acquaintance who was about to start a business. In the summer of 2016, I was able to become a participant in a startup incubator. We wrote an application on Android. But we didn’t open a business for various reasons. I continued my job search, but over time it became obvious that I needed to have a high-quality resume. After many refusals, I was called for an interview after a test task, again with algorithms. I dropped everything and went to the capital of Finland. I made a notebook in which I wrote down answers even to typical HR questions. For example, who do I want to be in 5 years and so on. This helped a lot. I went to the interview with shaking knees, but the questions were on Java Core, which were familiar to me after JavaRush.
The road to a bright future
As a result, I got into my first company as a Software Integration Developer. There I worked in a monolithic application in Java 7, learned not to be afraid to communicate with the command line of remote servers via SSH in pure Bash, work in an international team, work on the front end of a mobile optimized web application with a REST backend. Then my career took an interesting turn, where I wrote less and less in Java and went more and more into the world of NodeJS/Typescript, even learned AWS, learned the DevOps culture, where I automated application deployments in the cloud. But I am firmly convinced that even more new bugs and their solutions await me!
My conclusions
Constantly learning
Engage in interesting hobby projects
Make a beautiful and concise resume
Hone general interview skills
Write to me in telegram , I will be glad to help with advice on a career in IT to everyone!
In 2015, between the first and second years of my Finnish master's degree, I had a lot of free time. Somewhere in the middle of summer, I came across contextual advertising for JavaRush on VKontakte. I thought it was interesting because I didn’t have to pay anything. And I didn’t know a single normal programming language. I opened it, started reading and doing exercises. Some childish tasks, I thought. But then they became more difficult. I took the book "Thinking in Java" from the university library, which I read before going to bed. It only made my sleep better, by the way. And every day for the rest of the summer I programmed in Java and read a book. I was very happy then that I could create something, even simple console applications. By September, I realized that I had the opportunity to gain subjects related to programming. But it turned out that only courses on electronics and automatic systems were offered in English. It must be said that in Europe this means difficult programming in C/C++. Naturally, I had almost no knowledge of this, but I signed up anyway. There was also a Java course that was only available in Finnish. I wrote to the teacher and said that I really wanted to program. He accepted my request. I still continued to study every day on JavaRush. Then I decided to buy a subscription for $100. But in the end it was the best investment in self-education.
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