Introduction

Hi, there I'm Shashitha. This is the first time that I'm writing an article. So I think it's better to write this article telling you how I started my journey as a developer and also I hope it might help someone starting newly as a developer too.

Enough introduction, let's begin the journey.

A lot of free time

First of all, I should tell you that I didn't think much about how the software and websites on the internet work even though I played games on the computer since kindergarten. I was in the military cadet team and cause practices were sometimes held for months I didn't have much time after school. Once the COVID pandemic started I couldn't keep up with my cadet practices.

But the pandemic was a hidden gift for me. I had a lot of free time so I met new friends online and also began to explore things I could invest my time into. First, my best friend Seniru introduced me to "computer hacking" and it was the first thing that caught my eye.

It paved the path for me into thinking about how these websites and software are created. Because it's better when you know how the internet works rather than following blind steps in a hacking course.

Discovering the world of developers.

When I was searching all over the internet about "how Facebook was created?" etc. I found the same results like "It was programmed using Python, Java, C++" etc. That was the time I came across the thing called "coding" or "programming".

The more I explored more it became interesting. So I bought my first online course from Udemy. It was about programming using Python. So I spent a little time learning Python and that was when I realized that Python is not the language for creating websites.

Introduced to a new path

Then my friend told me that Web development is a whole new path and there are a whole lot of languages for web development. With that discovery, I was so fascinated.

So I started following a web development boot camp that taught basic HTML and CSS. But the sites created looked nothing like those on the internet.

Later I learned about frameworks like Bootstrap which helped to create slightly better sites but it was just the beginning. Later in that course, Javascript, Nodejs, and Ejs were taught as backend programming languages. Also, I learned SQL and MongoDB for the databases. But in modern websites, there are a lot of animations and designs that cannot be created using only basic CSS and javascript.

So I had to learn about advanced CSS and also the advanced side of JS and how it works.

There's no day you feel like you're ready

Even though I learned all those languages I never tested my skills outside the course. Although I was barely sure I was ready to test my skills I started creating a website for a hackathon. After learning python I always had an interest in AI. So I used voice commands to navigate my sites using DeepgramAPI. But the site was a bit complex and the 10 days given for the hackathon ended faster than I thought. But I'm still happy because I learned a lot about practical coding after my first hackathon

I learned that no matter how much you learn as a developer there will be always more things to learn. Now with the rise of web3, I started exploring languages like Solidity, and also to make my developer skills sharp I started to learn React, Tailwind, and Typescript.

End of the story

I always wonder how far I came within like 8-12 months. Web development is an interesting field where you learn new things every day and once you start investing your time into it, it becomes a daily habit of life.

I hope to contribute to web development even more in the future and also start a career as a freelancer too.