"But you're a girl, what do you know about programming?" — this phrase became my guiding principle as I entered the world of information technology. It was a remark from a close person in response to my unguarded expression of burgeoning feelings. But if I had listened to him, there would have been neither a story nor this progress.
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My story: the futility of old knowledge and the desire for a better life
Hello, my name is Vika, and people have always regarded me as a humanities person.
Information technology has always seemed like something magically unattainable to me for several reasons.
It just so happened that I spent my conscious youth on Bashorg. I didn't understand humor like, "how to patch KDE2 under FreeBSD," but I felt a certain pride in the fact that I knew about it, even if only at the level of familiarity with the letters.
During my studies, I had only one mini-course on HTML — but that didn't stop it from surfacing in my mind as an image of a beautiful webpage with hyperlinks seven years later.
But the predominant opinion of those around me was crucial. I was considered, if not stupid, then completely lacking in mathematical abilities. As a teenager, I accepted this opinion without a second thought.
In twenty-four years, I obtained a high school diploma and two vocational diplomas. The latter was in pharmaceuticals. My love for pharmacology began with the realization of some power over the human body and the idea that medications are powerful weapons in the hands of a knowledgeable specialist, which can both help and harm. Years went by, and my knowledge grew: pharmaceutical conferences, the legal side of pharmacy, working with objections, and so forth.
A little five-year upgrade:
Resume fragment
Along with the knowledge, the understanding of its futility grew — laws that are not obeyed and are disregarded in the pursuit of profit, and an environment that breaks your lovingly built house of cards of a favorable atmosphere with a sense of self-importance. I didn’t burn out, but I wished for a better life for myself. After all, we are what surrounds us, right?
How I learned and keep learning: minus a broken face from the keyboard, plus an awesome project in my portfolio
My first experience learning programming ended after a month of banging my face against the keyboard — it was hard to comprehend anything from a randomly found book online and an open notepad. My enthusiasm waned, and my desire faded. For a year. After which, I decided that I needed to start by mastering the resources.
Articles, websites, familiar programmers, a plethora of educational projects promising to turn you into an ideal developer in three months or even less, channels on a well-known video hosting site providing a sea of useful and less useful information. I had the desire and the means, but the problem lay in the lack of systematization of my knowledge. And decisiveness. I wasn't ready to spend an entire salary on a pig in a poke or to close my ears to the constant noise saying: 'You don't have a technical education, it's too late for you to learn, you should think about your family, you must, you must, you must...'
Then I learned about 'Hexlet'. It was mentioned quite casually in a conversation about the difficulties of self-learning. Not as a one-off course, but as a full-fledged school. And it caught my attention.
The turning point happened quite recently — after the completion of my first project. This is my favorite piece of it:
A console game that I made myself
Working in my own GitHub account under the guidance of an experienced mentor is perceived entirely differently. Actions like initializing a repository and setting up the working environment using a package manager, described in the 'tasks', take on an exciting sense of responsibility for what you are doing.
At first, the set of "tasks" can be overwhelming, but you begin to understand why juniors are asked for projects on their resumes, at least non-commercial ones. It's a completely different level of perception. This is the moment when you have already familiarized yourself with the concept of variables, learned to write functions, including anonymous ones, and discovered linear iterative and linear recursive processes. And just when the euphoria fills you up, and the feeling that you can change the world leaves you only in dreams, you are told: "Create a file and write," "Isolate the common logic and move it to a separate function," "Don’t forget about proper naming and design principles," "Don’t complicate things!" It feels like a cold shower on your head, which doesn’t cancel out the boiling inside. I'm extremely glad that I managed to catch this feeling before starting work "in the field."
I could only express my individuality in the readme:
In the readme, one can let creativity flow
Learning has always been difficult. OOP once seemed to me an insurmountable obstacle. I lost count of the attempts to understand at least the basics — I spent about ten days on this, receiving about as many condescending messages like: "Just don’t give up." But at some point, the desire to close everything and retreat into a corner became my body's defensive reaction to the overwhelming influx of new information.
It became easier. At least that’s how it was with learning SQL. Perhaps because of its declarative nature, of course, but that’s not certain.
The project is ready, and the resume is prepared. Job interviews are ahead.
At some point, I realized that if pharmacology is the "power" over the human body, then programming is the "power" over practically the entire world. A programming language, in turn, is a weapon that can either elevate a company to a new level or accidentally destroy it through carelessness. I declared myself a latent dictator and dived headfirst into the realm of information technology.
Six months ago, I was proud of setting up a working environment on Windows, compiling a whole list of books, and considering a career in programming. Now, my pride lies in that very comprehensive project, the list of books I've already read, but most importantly — understanding the significance of basic knowledge and the fundamentals of the programming language I've chosen. I also realize the responsibility that comes with committing to development.
Indeed, this is still a very short track record, and I have a lot of work ahead, but I wanted to offer some inspiration to the readers of this tale who might have faced the arrogant comment, 'maybe you should find something easier.' I want to instill a bit of confidence in those reading this article with skepticism, showing that there are people who approach learning any programming language with full responsibility, and to give myself a little courage.
Because the resume is ready, the most important knowledge has been acquired, and now I just need a bit of determination. But now, I’m the cat in a bag. I never closed my ears to opinions, by the way; I learned to abstract from others’ views. I’ve taken three courses on abstraction.
Source: habr.com
