A Reason to Code

11 Apr 2018 - Eric Chrobak

Computer programming/coding started out as the domain of “geeks”, “nerds”, and “hackers” from the 50’s up until the last 10-15 years. Around the time of the dotcom burst of the the late 90’s many more people started pursuing careers in programming(coding). What was once a job behind a honking monitor with slacks, tie, and pens in the front pocket has become a hip job associated with people riding their bike through the offices at Google, working remotely from home, and people at Starbuck’s coffee shops sipping on macchiato’s and latte’s with Macbook Pro’s pecking away at the keyboard.

My journey to coding started back in the mid to late 90’s. My mother was a single mom raising my sisters and I while trying to start her own business. She purchased a Gateway 2000 desktop computer to run her business. I helped her doing the computer work and entertained myself playing Starcraft. I learned the in’s and out’s of the window’s 95 operating system including working in MSDos and removing a few viruses(without antivirus software) that infected the computer. I spent the whole weekend on that one!!

I really enjoyed the challenge of solving problems and fixing things. When I went to college in 2002 I started learning Java and Visual Basic as I thought I would go into programming to make money and have an easy job. It wasn’t easy and I ended up quiting the CS degree. I wasn’t ready to work hard yet. I floated around for the next 4 years. I became frustrated with the lack of progress in my life. I am a praying man and after praying felt like God directed me to go to a theological school. So I went to a Bible College in downtown Chicago to pursue an undergraduate in the Bible. While there I worked at the IT department’s Help Desk. My colleagues would often jump into some terminal or coding language to resolve issues that came up. At the time I didn’t imagine that I could do the same thing and thought you needed to spend 4 years learning these things.

After finishing college I began working at a small Gutter Cleaning and repair company in Chicago. After several years working there I felt like I wasn’t moving forward and needed to learn some more skills. I spent time praying and asked some friends and acquaintances if they had recommendations. A high school friend recommended learning coding. He had been doing CAD drafting for 10 years and then taught himself JavaScript. After investing his hard earned money in Starbuck’s stock(he bought a lot of coffee to stay up at night learning to code!) he eventually was hired as a JavaScript developer at a software company. When I visited him at his office I thought I if invest my money in Starbucks and stay up late learning to code then maybe one day I will be that guy sitting in a coffee shop sipping a latte with my Macbook writing code!

I started some free classes on Codecademy. It was slow going for awhile but, I had a strong sense this was a good direction to go. I found the more I was coding and learning the more I wanted to learn. Solving coding challenges wasn’t work to me. It was like playing a video game. Some friends mentioned that there were schools where you studied programming all day for 3 months and then you would be prepared to build software and be employable. I thought that was a great idea so I researched different schools. I attended a few info sessions on some here in Chicago.

My excitement to go to a school grew and I was set on applying and attending Full-Stack Academy in Chicago. At that time I got married and shortly after we were expecting a baby. My priorities changed quickly and doing an in-person school was no longer a realistic plan. So I looked into my options for an online school. After talking with friends in the industry, reading blogs, online reviews, etc. I settled on Flatiron School’s Online Web Developer. After going through their prep work I applied and was accepted.

I started last week and have been learning so much thus far. The hardest thing I’ve had to do thus far is rebuild a Tic Tac Toe game. I stayed up till the wee hours of the morning last night trying to figure out why the game couldn’t determine if a move was a winning move or not!! I am going to have to get help on this one.

There is so much more to learn and to come!! Stay tuned for more!