This is my blog to document my journey to earn an internship at Shopify as a Software Engineer in September, 2026. I’m starting at the bottom and will provide full transparency to my entire learning process, to show what it’s really like to be a programmer in 2025, what the job market is like, and that a computer science education can do more for you than McDonald's manager (no hate, my resume might end up there). If this sounds interesting to you, maybe you can learn from me or laugh at me or just see if I can do it, follow my journey! I’ll be sharing everything.

Why I’m doing this, my plans, and a little about me…

Personal growth is probably at the top of my list of important values. I am a big believer in the fact that your outward success directly reflects your inner character. You don’t earn what you want — you earn what your skills are worth. James Clear is obviously more literary-competent than I am: “You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems”. So that’s why my net worth is largely made up of just my MacBook and Iphone. That’s pretty much the level of my inner character, even if my ego wants to believe I’m Bill Gates. So why am I doing this? A little bit about me first might help actually. I was a lazy, rude, self centered, disrespectful, egotistical, lying, doom scrolling dopamine seeking I’m-gonna-put-you-down-to-make-myself-feel-better, video game addicted little shit. Actually, not only was I privileged enough to get away with this, I was also a scammer. Yup. I’m not gonna get into that, I’m really not looking for a life sentence or have this make an appearance on my resume (it was robux scams as a 10 year old. I was a real entrepreneur).

Then I gained some real consciousness and values. 70s-80s throughout school, until in grade 11 I took some responsibility and changed everything in a year (that’s all it takes). So I did nothing all my life pretty much, then in my last year of school here is my track record: earned grade 9 RMC in piano, top 50 in Canada in a video game, averaged high 90s to mid 90s, won many badminton tournaments after losing every single one when I started the year previous, got accepted into all the big school for CS in Canada, ran many half marathons and 10-15km daily after being fat (I’m skinny but the way I eat and behave resembles that of a fatass), and set up an airbnb and became a top 10% host (idk what this means but it’s not as special as it sounds). Sounds like I’m getting set up for success? Nope.

A quote that beautifully summarizes the state I was in at this point is from Ruth in Ozark: “I don’t know shit about fuck”. Real life hit me like a truck, I didn’t know exactly what to do, I loved badminton to death, so… I decided to try to go pro. Then I was progressing a lot, looking pretty good, feeling on top of the world. Then the truck did a 3 point turn again and came back around to flatten me the second time. I had no money, wasn’t progressing much (I was stupid, I didn’t rest at all and lost over 15 pounds even while on a 4-5k calorie per day diet!), and realized this doesn’t actually fully align with my values. That brings me to the most recent stage of my life: E-Commerce. I dedicated myself to learning everything there is to know about business, started many brands of my own (only a few made money, don’t let me fool you I was at best an average marketer on a great day with lots of sleep), and I just fell in love with entrepreneurship. I thought it was evil, capitalism, profiting off of the less fortunate, etc, but I realized that it’s fundamentally just helping other people – solving problems. There can be bad things done here, but that’s not to do with entrepreneurs, that has to do with you being an evil motherfucker. So on this journey I used Shopify, and I’ve never truly had so much respect and love for a company before. This isn’t to get ‘political’ or anything, I just really appreciate what the company is doing for entrepreneurs. I know if it weren’t for them I wouldn’t have been able to start. I want to work with them and learn from them.

So… there are many reasons that I’m documenting my journey and sharing it online. Obviously I can say all the honorable things like changing the world, spreading love, making education free, and you know what those are 100% part of it. But honestly, the biggest part of it is just because I want to share my knowledge and use it as leverage to get to my goals. Of course I love helping people, who doesn’t?? But what do I REALLY care about? My family. My people. My goals. Changing the world and making an impact on everyone out there can come after I make an impact on the people closest to me first. I want to be a great son and retire my parents, a great boyfriend because I want to give the best life possible to the 1 person who is my best friend and greatest partner for the rest of my life, and a great friend who offers help because I love my friends. It’s honestly hard to care about the world when I could do better for my family right now. So that’s what this blog is. That doesn’t take away 1 bit from all the value I’m going to provide. In fact, you can expect me to milk as much knowledge as I possibly can to provide as much value to you as possible because I depend on it. I’m literally not going to hold anything back because it is a requirement to demonstrate EVERYTHING that I know. It is my goal to help you, help me, and help my people.

So, my plans?

I’ve learned a lot from my time as a solopreneur, and here are some of the most important things that I’m going to list out which has impacted my growth and which I believe will impact my development as a programmer (these are character impacts, not business impact):

1. Learn the fundamentals, then cut off ALL new sources. This is because consuming more content past the foundational level becomes procrastination disguised as productivity. Getting better at anything is just doing the basics — over and over again. Easy analogy: In badminton, it's hitting the birdie, footwork, strategy — that’s the game. Fundamentals IS the activity itself. Watching 100 videos won’t save you if you’ve never practiced. So first, I will learn the fundamentals of programming, and the fundamentals of learning how to learn. An important principle to carry throughout this entire journey (and anything in life actually) is the 80/20 rule. I’m sure you know about this, it’s essentially getting down to the most important/high leverage activities, and minimizing the rest.

2. Learning through experience is more effective than through courses or books or videos. This supports point 1. Experience will teach you everything you need to know, if there’s a step you’re missing to get to the next level, experience will let you know by choke holding you until you have to do something to get out of it. With this, I will practice using my knowledge as soon as possible in real projects.

3. Reverse engineer. What works has already been done, just learn from others. The lessons are in the product. A really good website shows you EVERYTHING, all of their thought process and optimization techniques. Knowing this, I will research how to get a software engineering job at Shopify first, see what they want, and then work my way backwards and build my resume around that.

If you’ve made it here, my blog might provide some value to you. Feel free to follow it and I will show EVERYTHING that I go through in my journey to scoring a Shopify internship next year. I’ll include the most important lessons I learn along the way, the ups and downs and the ambiguous parts of this journey, and all the emotional parts of it too. I will be uploading once every week or two, since my main focus is obviously to learn programming and play catch up as fast as possible. So every time I post it will include all the value I gained, packed up, shared to you. You following this will also help keep me accountable, since I’ll know someone is out there watching. Thanks for reading! I’ll do my best.