A Coding Journey

Like many before me, I have begun my journey of learning to write code. I will tell you about this in more detail, but first, let me tell you a bit about myself and my journey until now.

Early beginnings

I started having an interest in coding at a fairly early age, finding it fascinating that a game could be created with only something called "programming" so I journeyed forth and bothered my parents about it to which they responded by giving me a book called "Java for Dummies". It didn't take more than an hour for me to give up, not understanding the book's teaching whatsoever. I believe to this day that it is a horrible book to give a child who is interested in learning to program. It would be much better to start by teaching them what programming entails, and how it works. The coding foundations as we all like to call them.

Junior High and High School

When Minecraft came out I was one of the first people to play it, still in the alpha stages when it was not well known yet and water/lava had not been added yet. I found it fascinating. I could watch live as this world was becoming more complex and beautiful. Thus when I heard of people modding the game I naturally became interested, and even took part a tiny bit! I had found some tutorials on YouTube on how to create a special weapon, or a potion or anything of that sort and just by following the instructions suddenly -BOOM- I had a working modded version of Minecraft! I realized pretty quickly that I had not actually learned how to modify the game, or how to program, but rather I had only learned it was possible. I did not understand the concepts still and I certainly could not alter the game myself without a set of exact instructions, but now I knew perhaps programming was not impossible after all. I joined a class called Programming 11 where I learned some of the very basics of, you guessed it, Java once again. I joined the school programming club and I even went to a programming competition for High schoolers, my partner and I did decently, but mostly because my partner was much better than me.

University

I decided that although I didn't understand programming all that well still, and that I just knew a bunch of the basic parts of Java syntax I would continue following my dream and went to University for Computer Science! I was quite young when I joined University, and very immature. 17 years old might be ok for some people, but I had a hard time sitting still in classes just like before. I went to my classes but soon realized I could not follow the math class I had joined, and had no idea what was happening. This only continued in each of my courses where I decided to spend the rest of the semester mostly with friends and playing video games. I then dropped out for half a year before I restarted in the same faculty but a slightly different program in hopes it would be less theoretical: "Informatics". Although I did attend classes a bit more with better results the same situation ended up occuring in the end. I made a lot of friends and learned a bit about myself. I ended up not being able to pass the courses at a high enough level to warrant continuing University and dropped out once again.

Post Uni DropOut

I ended up moving in with my sister in a small apartment while I searched for minimum-wage jobs, and I did many different things. I learned about a life of unforgiving work and that hard work pays off. I ended up working in a pawn shop where the owner and the only other worker were two elderly gentlemen who seemed to garner a lot of respect in the community. I loved listening to stories from their lives as they had lived through a much different time than I had, and although I did not agree with most of their world views we got along very well. I did not try to change their minds about decades-old beliefs and instead used it as a kind of life lesson that just because you don't agree with how someone thinks and does things does not mean you cannot get along.

I did not see myself staying there forever and asked my father for advice who at the time told me to look into the vocational training available in our homeland of Germany.

Electronics technician training in Berlin

I moved to Berlin my hometown, and began my vocational training. This was a system of working all year long at a company and during the normal school year going every 3rd week to a school where they taught us all kinds of things to do with electronics. We learned things like how different light switch systems to how a transistor works. We also took a much less memorable gym class and social studies class.

My favorite classes were in fact PLC programming, which I learned to dislike because of the software used being much too rigid, and an Arduino class, where we learned to program in C++! Honestly, we did not learn a lot about programming itself, but it was very interesting how programming and electronics combined into one, allowing us to make very complex things occur with an Arduino hooked up to some simple electronics. This is where I decided my certification project would somehow involve an Arduino if I was allowed and it was! I made a very simple program as a proof of concept for an Ethanol tank overwatch system.

Sweden

After finishing my certification I eventually moved to Sweden with my girlfriend. We have been here ever since. I joined a small startup and helped them build the electronics for their systems. It did not last long and then I joined a big project, which I will not name since I am still working there. After starting there I rekindled my interest in programming but decided I wanted to try my hand at a language I would not need to learn much syntax for. Thus the start of my journey as a programmer truly started again, as I had started learning Python! I would spend every day to and from work trying to learn basic concepts on CodeAcademy.

NOW:

I am now continuing with my Python journey, and have plans to start my very first project! I wanted to first write a blog about who I am and how far I have gotten before we move on to my journey with my first simple project: A terminal-based game of Minesweeper!