Hating Computers... 🤮
Growing up in the 21st century I saw how fast the world changed. From touchscreen devices to Augmented Reality. As a kid, I always loved sports, and especially as a Sri Lankan I loved cricket🏏. I played all day long and at some point around the 2010s, my friends started playing computer games. I also played a few computer games like ( GTA Vice City and Need for Speed Underground) with my friend's computers, and I didn't have the excitement my friends had.😟 ( Maybe I was bad at computer games ) Then I made up my mind,
computer games are for the dumbos, real kids play real sports 😂.
I never asked my parents to buy me a computer like most of my friends did. I was this kid who never troubled their parents to buy them stuff😅.
Discovering the field of IT 😍
Time went by and after my O/L exams I was deciding on which subjects to choose for my Advanced Level studies. I chose mathematics, physics, and chemistry as subjects. One day a cousin of mine talked about the IT subject which is available to choose as a subject. And, I thought of giving it a try instead of chemistry. I attended my first IT tuition class by a teacher called Teran Subasinghe. On the first day, he talked about the IT industry and its advancement's and I was excited like my friends who were excited about playing computer games back then. From that point onwards I decided my career will be in the field of IT. At that point in time, I had a laptop that my dad bought. I asked him for a smartphone and he bought me a laptop instead (thank god he didn't buy me a smartphone😅).
At school, I had the chance to participate in an island-wide web development competition which was organized by a neighboring school. I was new to HTML and CSS at that time. Out of courage, I opted in. The challenge was to build a personal website using HTML and CSS. After googling for a few days I discovered Brad Traversy's youtube channel, that's where I learned how to put things together. I built my first working website and won 3rd place, which I still feel proud of.
During this time period, I discovered the power of google.
I understood that answers to any coding problem(or sometimes real-life problems) I face could be solved by just googling it.
My Journey of Self Learning Web Development 🧧
Somehow I googled my way to discover Freecode Camp this is one of the best coding communities I have ever come across. Then soon I joined Twitter and did the #100DaysOfCode challenge. I followed some great devs who shared their knowledge in web development, which further broadened my knowledge. That's how my self-learning journey took off.
Getting my first clients 🤑
Then I got my first client who is a local tutor, I made a deal to make a website for her institute. I had no idea whatsoever on how to create websites for clients, again I googled my way through. I used HTML CSS and Bootstrap to create the website and the client was happy. I learned a lot working on this project.
My Plans for this Year 🏃♂️
I'm currently self-learning + I got access to a free 10-month web development Bootcamp. Coding has changed my life and I hope it will change yours for the good. I hoping to get a job pretty soon.
Never stop learning.
Thank You for taking your time to read this🙏 I'm Ahnaf, signing out, and I'll catch you with the next article. Till then keep coding🖤
Follow me on Twitter where I share my journey.