Genesis

In the beginning, there was just a will to learn new things. My story is very common to other people who decide to learn how to code. I've always loved technology and always liked computers.

When I was little I had a dream to be a game maker and create games. Discovering the software RPG game maker was a breakthrough and I spent hours just creating levels and stories that have never seen the light of the day.

In year six I had a pretty bad maths teacher and always thought that I was too dumb to learn math and wouldn't be able to follow my dream to work with games. After that, I have always felt a bit lost and unsure of what to do in the future.

MOOCs, a girl and code

Fast forwarding a few years later. I was in love with this girl that was about to start a bachelor degree in computer science, we used to talk all the time and the idea of learning how to code came back to my mind.

After a quick online search, I have picked up a book on Java and decided to start learning.

public class java {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
     System.out.println("Hello World");
  }
}

The first thing I did with Java didn't break tradition, this little hello world was the most exciting thing that had happened that week. I kept trying to learn Java but the book jumped into the hard stuff and I started my second year in university - taking a Tourism degree - so I had to put on hold this goal of learning how to code.

Later on, I had found codecademy and after edx, coding was again on my sights! Edx and the course from MIT Introduction to computer science using python really made me fall in love with code again.

We had a study group and we used to talk all the time when we were stuck. I remember working on problems throughout the whole night and not even noticing that it was early in the morning already.

At this time I was both working full time and finishing the last year of university at night so I couldn't complete the course in time. Still, I loved every hour spent trying to crack a problem and this course really helped me develop my problem-solving skills and increase this passion for code.

The future

I had one more attempt at sticking with learning how to code and creating stuff with it. But I have made the decision to move to the UK, between working as a pot wash for nearly 70 hours a week, living in a room with no internet and trying to start a new life in a different country, I had no time to keep up with studying and learning, but that is a story for another time...