11/11/2023 0 Comments Air force software engineerThis will happen more often than you could imagine! Solving the challenges became addictive, and learning to conquer ones I could not solve was also enticing. It also turned into something that I really enjoyed. This turned into many late nights of coding. The structure of the curriculum and the success stories from the users really hyped me up! It hyped me up enough to make me vow to myself that I would finish one of the certifications on the site, and never give up. I discovered it after chatting with a fellow learner that was also learning to code. Quincy Larson has done an awesome job making the site approachable and building a huge community behind it. Learning about was the turning point of my quest to code. I also bounced from site to site, trying course snippets here and there. For the next few months, I would procrastinate and try to solve the challenges periodically. It was interesting, but it did not grab my attention how I would have liked at first. The first programming language I tried was JavaScript, and I also tried some HTML and CSS. Instructions on the left, code in the middle, results on the right. It was perfect because of how straightforward the user interface is and how it gave real-time feedback on your code. I immediately found, which was perfect to get my first taste of writing code. To start my new quest, I simply Googled “ How to code,” the most millennial way ever to start learning something. But this was definitely the spark that started the fire. I say halfway because I ended up starting this journey more than once, unfortunately. Image source.Įventually this led me to mutter the words “If I cannot find someone technical, I will make myself technical.” And BOOM, my journey of learning to code had halfway started. After a few failed attempts at finding that someone, my frustration started building up. What we needed was a “Technical Founder,” someone to build our dreams with code, or at least the prototype (AKA the minimum viable product). There were many people like me who had ideas, but could not execute them. Then I noticed a recurring situation pop up. And from the crazy number of books and articles I read, I knew I needed a lot more to start a company. Before having this goal, I was just a young Airman with dreams of building a Tech company, with a minimal amount of knowledge of how to do it. When I first arrived to my duty station in Northern California (Travis AFB) in December 2012, I had NO aspirations of becoming a software engineer. Not true! Tech companies have diverse departments just like any other company. Side note: A lot of people I have talked to about getting into Tech think they must possess the ability to code to get in. But it would all come together in ways I could have never predicted. I also did not have any meaningful connections at any Tech companies or with anyone in the Tech community (this will come into play soon). I started my learning totally from zero, meaning it is never too late to start learning ( Here is an article about people that have done it in their 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s by Quincy Larson to prove it!). I had never even hooked up my Myspace page back in the day. I will include every relevant detail from the first line of code I wrote to getting my offer letter from Twitter.īefore getting to my base I did not have any programming experience. But it is possible, and I will tell you exactly how I accomplished it. I am glad you asked, because if I did not live it I would say it sounds far-fetched. I went from being junior enlisted to being a self-taught software engineer intern at a tech company. Jackson How I went from enlisted Air Force to software engineer intern A story of coding, networking, and growth.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |