Why did I decide to do software development?

Posted by Deb Johnson on April 15, 2017

I have been programming on and off for about 30 years now. I remember using my mom’s Atari back in 1987 to write little programs in BASIC that printed things out on the screen, and I just thought that was the coolest thing in the world! I really enjoyed every time I was able to learn more about programming while I took my college classes for my Associates and Bachelors. In my Master’s program, there wasn’t much about programming (hindsight being 20/20 that should’ve been a clue to me that I needed to be in a different program). After working 20 years in the medical field, I knew I wanted to do something that involved computers, and that was why I took the computer related degrees.

I like the idea of being able to tell the computer to do something, using the right language, and it does it. It is similar to my hobby of knitting in that you get a pattern and repeat the same instructions over and over until you have a finished product and if you want something different, you change how you do certain parts of it. I like seeing the results of what I’ve worked on and being able to manipulate certain lines of code to have different results just like in my knitting projects.

Programming has been in the back of my mind all along, so when I found Flatiron School’s Bootcamp Prep, I was excited about the possibilities. I was able to remember a lot of the JavaScript from learning it on Khan Academy in the last year, so I was done with a good chunk of it when I learned that I would be accepted to the Full Stack Web Development program. I also felt really honored that I would be chosen to receive a 50% scholarship through the Women Take Tech Initiative. I am highly motivated to make everyone proud of me by doing excellent work as I go through this program. Not just that, but I’m happy to get the skills necessary to get a job and be able to enjoy and be passionate about what I’m doing.