Since childhood, I dreamed of becoming a programmer. The first computer appeared in the mid-90s when I was 6-7 years old. At school, I already tried programming from books (Visual Basic, Pascal), but due to my young age and lack of Internet, I never developed this skill to a sufficient level. As a result, somewhere I took a wrong turn. Behind me: - Two expulsions from 2 different technical schools. The first one skipped, the second one was boring and turned out to be useless both in terms of knowledge and the value of the diploma; - Evening school - you have to finish grades 10-11 somehow; - Admission to university with the loss of a certificate exactly after successfully passing exams and passing on a budget and, as a result, again without education; - 10 years of self-discovery, changing 15+ professions (loader, market trade, enikey, catering, customs, factories, crewing, retail, wholesale trade, etc.); - a lot of bad habits and sometimes addictions. Bad companies and their influence on me; - 1 marriage; - emigration; - maintaining the life of a paralyzed loved one for 5 years and losing him. The list can go on for a long time, but there is that moment when everything changed. At the age of 27, being in a country whose citizenship I did not have, and doing all sorts of nonsense as always, that is, working as a bartender and whatever else I had to do, I suddenly began to think: “am I doing everything right in life? Why am I doing the wrong thing? what did you dream of? Maybe I’m still making mistakes”? At this point, I began to think more critically and realized that either I was not as smart as I thought or I was just lazy. I'll give a spoiler: both options are to some extent about me. So I started looking for books on programming and came across JR. At first it was interesting, but I quickly realized that I was bored of solving sometimes seemingly trivial tasks of outputting arrays to the console, etc. But I motivated myself by the fact that in any job there are nuances when you are bored and naturally this also exists in the work of a software developer. I also motivated myself by the fact that as a child I was very interested, but there was not enough Internet to look for other sources of information, but now please use it. I also quickly realized that smoking and alcohol interfered with my concentration. I quit one day and when I really wanted to smoke, I started doing squats or push-ups until I didn’t want to anymore. The first months it was very unusual to look at the world with a sober look - too much energy, but I knew where to direct it (JR). I also got divorced because I realized that in fact, my views on life differ and the person only makes sarcastic remarks about my aspirations, while he himself is wasting his life. A year passed of studying and trying to get an interview. I decided to increase my chances and go to university to study software engineering. I had to prepare for testing, since at the time of graduation there were only exams. 3 months of preparation, successful testing with good scores, and already in the fall the first result - the first job in IT. The employer understands that I decided to thoroughly devote myself to this matter, once in almost 30 years I decided to enter the university for this specialty. The first job was for pennies (about 20k rubles) as a load testing engineer - writing tests in Java for the target system's API load and conducting testing with writing reports and analysis. Within half a year I received an offer for a middle developer position and from there it went. Currently I work in an international FinTech organization from the top 10 global investment banks. The stack has expanded significantly over the years. Next year bachelor, then I plan to go to master's degree. In general, I don’t regret anything - I have an interesting life experience, which only helps me rationally perceive reality and correctly assess the situation. In the process of studying, in addition to JR, I went through the same material in Schildt’s book, read the Philosophy of Java, Clean Code, and Beck’s Extreme Programming. Also, on the way to/from work, I watched the video course of Ivan Golovach (a dubious character, but the course on the root tracker is interesting) - it often helped to understand what was not achieved through JR and Schildt. I advise everyone who has embarked on the path of learning programming: - Be critical of yourself and always allow for the possibility that things may not go as you planned. - Read and watch exclusively in English; - Start using git as early as possible; - Write correct tests; - Don’t skip seemingly simple tasks (it’s in them that you often make mistakes and resolving them gives you that very useful experience and understanding of how everything works); - Apply not only for dev vacancies, but also for QA - believe me, 1 month of real experience in development, even in the role of QA, will give you much more than half a year of cramming and home projects. - Go to interviews even if you are not going to change your job - this gives you useful feedback and an understanding of where you are falling short. - Get out of your comfort zone - if the project becomes familiar and boring, there are no tasks forcing you to learn something new - then it’s time to change something. - Do more than talk about your intentions to do something. - Well, don’t listen to those who are trying to dissuade you of your aspirations. PS Don't be afraid to change anything in life - we only have one. Beck's Extreme Programming. Also, on the way to/from work, I watched the video course of Ivan Golovach (a dubious character, but the course on the root tracker is interesting) - it often helped to understand what was not achieved through JR and Schildt. I advise everyone who has embarked on the path of learning programming: - Be critical of yourself and always allow for the possibility that things may not go as you planned. - Read and watch exclusively in English; - Start using git as early as possible; - Write correct tests; - Don’t skip seemingly simple tasks (it’s in them that you often make mistakes and resolving them gives you that very useful experience and understanding of how everything works); - Apply not only for dev vacancies, but also for QA - believe me, 1 month of real experience in development, even in the role of QA, will give you much more than half a year of cramming and home projects. - Go to interviews even if you are not going to change your job - this gives you useful feedback and an understanding of where you are falling short. - Get out of your comfort zone - if the project becomes familiar and boring, there are no tasks forcing you to learn something new - then it’s time to change something. - Do more than talk about your intentions to do something. - Well, don’t listen to those who are trying to dissuade you of your aspirations. PS Don't be afraid to change anything in life - we only have one. Beck's Extreme Programming. Also, on the way to/from work, I watched the video course of Ivan Golovach (a dubious character, but the course on the root tracker is interesting) - it often helped to understand what was not achieved through JR and Schildt. I advise everyone who has embarked on the path of learning programming: - Be critical of yourself and always allow for the possibility that things may not go as you planned. - Read and watch exclusively in English; - Start using git as early as possible; - Write correct tests; - Don’t skip seemingly simple tasks (it’s in them that you often make mistakes and resolving them gives you that very useful experience and understanding of how everything works); - Apply not only for dev vacancies, but also for QA - believe me, 1 month of real experience in development, even in the role of QA, will give you much more than half a year of cramming and home projects. - Go to interviews even if you are not going to change your job - this gives you useful feedback and an understanding of where you are falling short. - Get out of your comfort zone - if the project becomes familiar and boring, there are no tasks forcing you to learn something new - then it’s time to change something. - Do more than talk about your intentions to do something. - Well, don’t listen to those who are trying to dissuade you of your aspirations. PS Don't be afraid to change anything in life - we only have one.
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