A 21-Year Journey Milestone
Posted June 23, 2018
My latest development training program only spanned six months. But I've been preparing for my first developer job for 21 years.
10,000 hours? I hit that a decade ago
When I'm job hunting for my first official development job, I get a knot in my stomach whenever I see experience requirements. "Three years." "Five years." "This is not an entry-level job." I did my homework before spending the money and committing the time to my development program; I signed up because full-stack developers are in demand. But now that I'm about to earn my certificate, I wonder if it'll be enough to find that elusive dev job.
But wait. This won't be the first job for which I write HTML. Or CSS. Or even JavaScript. I've built dozens of websites from scratch for small businesses ranging from rental yards to financial planners. I've registered URLs, arranged hosting, gathered and optimized images, found content, written content, navigated the pre-launch "can you move this here and put that there" conversations, then maintained and added onto sites once they were launched.
The staying power of passion
The web has evolved exponentially since I took my first HTML class at KU back in 1997. Back then it was exciting to merely have a World Wide Web presence, let alone interactivity, an app version, and cross-viewport responsiveness. But from the first time I typed those HTML head and body tags into a text editor, pushed my file to the server via FTP and gazed upon my creation with pride in my 486 personal computer's Mosaic browser, I was smitten.
As a writer, the ability to cut out the publisher and put my words straight on a platform where the whole world could read them was incredibly powerful. As web publishing tools evolved and grew more powerful, I evolved along with them. Over the last few years, I've curtailed my HTML and CSS access with content management system work. But I never lost the passion for website creation that first HTML class instilled.
With full-stack certification in sight, I couldn't be more excited about diving into full-time development. I've expanded and updated my core page-building knowledge, incorporated responsiveness and interactivity, and tried my hand at dozens of new libraries, languages, software and frameworks. I understand the MEAN and MERN in full-stack development, and I'm eager to keep building on what I know. Which is far from everything. But in my third development decade, I have no plans to slow down. Here's hoping there's an employer out there who has enough sprinters on hand and sees the value in someone with the endurance and commitment to run ... err code ... the marathon.