How I Became A Developer
As an elementary school kid in the late 90’s I remember using AOL to chat with friends, explore message boards and surf the World Wide Web. It wasn’t long until I created my first web site using builders such as MaxPages, Angelfire, and Geocities. By the early 2000’s I had graduated to building sites from scratch using HTML frames, a shoddy FTP program and cheap hosting. I remember creating layouts in an image editor and slicing up the pictures to use in my HTML tables. To this day I still remember my awe when I learned about divs and how I could use them to get around the need to slice.
During the mid 2000’s as I graduated high school, my interests switched from web development to that of helping others. I’d go on to finish college as a Registered Nurse and commissioned as a Naval Officer soon after. But somehow during this 6-8 year hiatus from the web, I still found myself gravitating towards it. My senior portfolio in nursing school was a website rather than the traditional three ring binder (my professors loved it). During my first year in the Navy I stood out from my peers by standing up my hospital’s intranet committee. I even went so far as to redesigning the entire hospital intranet site only to be shot down due to “budgeting constraints.”
It was about two years ago, as my Navy contract was winding down that I realized my true passion was in web and software development. And so as my nurse peers started grad programs and furthered their careers, I spent my night and weekends chasing my passion. I even created a curriculum for myself that comprised of all the resources I found to have good reviews.
And so after taking the long way, here I am. My Navy career is officially over as of September 30th, 2015 and my last day as a nurse was in mid July. While I’m sure one day I’ll get nostalgic and miss the hustle and bustle of a busy ward, my focus now is to pursue something I’ve always gravitated towards. Here’s to computers, the information highway, and to everyone else out there who find themselves forever intrigued by their limitless possibilities.