Now that I have been a Developer for about 4 months I would like to share my experience and feelings with you all. I truly wanted to write this after my first month but time started to escape me. Now that I have the time to write it out here we go.
The First 42 hours
These are the longest and hardest parts about the job. This was the part that I was scared and trying my best, as they explained what I would be doing and working on. As my lead was explaining about the project all I could hear my heart sinking and I began to doubt my abilities. Lucky for me this was just an introduction day. I knew that everything I had learned from school and by myself was going to be tested and it was going to show if I could or couldn’t handle being a developer. Which is what scared me the most.
The next day it was code time. This is where I can sink or swim. I was nervous but excited. For anything I didn’t know how to do I asked immediately. Which I don’t know if worked the nerve of my lead that day but I rather do something right then screw everything up. Which he helped me and seemed to understand that I was the junior developer. So he gives me my first web service assignment of creating a function in PHP to check if YouTube videos are private and make them private on our site. I think I spent about a day and a half figuring out how to use Google API. At this time I never was successful using APIs but I couldn’t and wouldn’t tell them that. Instead, I rose to the occasion and got it done. Next, they had me work on a web service for upcoming games. Which I also got done but struggled not as much but I did.
How Do You Feel About Being A Developer Now?
As of now and the day I started first touching code my feelings haven’t changed. I love being a developer! This fact may never change for me but there are some feelings that did.
While I was trying to get into the industry I developed an overwhelming confidence in my abilities. It was like a cockiness which was good and bad. It started to make me feel untouchable and if I could never mess up or even write bad code. If you guessed that writing bad code started to happen, it did. I started to get sloppy and unmotivated to write code even though I love to work on the code. Crazy huh? However, now that I’m in the field I have a bigger strive for better code. Also, concepts that school taught and what I have learned have been two different experiences entirely. However, that’s a conversation for another day.
Time to sum it up
All in all, I can say that being a developer has been a dream come true that I wouldn’t like to wake up from. As the day’s tick and the past I more and more fall in love with this profession. The more I get to just create and improve my skill, the more I think to myself damn I’m so lucky. Now there’s only one last time for me to accomplish and I will fill you all in about that at a later date.
