My history on software development

As my blog's first text, I am going to tell a very personal story: my relationship with software development and my career until now. Although this text is very long, I will divide it into short chapters to make the text easier.

The beginning of everything

My history with computers is quite old. I like to play on the computer and explore it's functionalities since I was a child.

Although I knew how to use the computer, install operating systems and all that stuff, being a developer seemed very hard to me. I used to open executables files in the notepad and ask myself how anyone could write that.

At the age of 13, automating a button soccer championship in Excel, after recording and using some macros I found that I could edit those instructions using text only. That VBA lines of code were my first contact with software development.

The first lines of code

Watching videos and reading tutorials on the internet, I learned a lot about the language and the copy and paste of Stack Overflow helped me when I didn't know what I was doing. At that time, I dedicated myself every day to a spreadsheet with my school's grades and I was very proud of it.

The next step came in 2013, at the age of 15/16. I found out a language that had more powers than VBA and of course I wanted to try it out. Then, I downloaded Visual Studio and started programming with VB. I learned a lot and created some cool programs with him, especially for my family.

When coding became serious

Even in 2013, I had many doubts about my career. Although I like to code, I saw it more as a hobby than as my profession.

In high school, I was attending a technical course in Clinical Analysis. At that time, I used my spreadsheets to automate the examination results. I loved using my programming knowledge to automate tasks during the course.

At the end of high school, I decided definitively for the computing area and started a Bachelor's degree in Information Systems at FIAP.

Although I thought I already knew how to program, the programming classes brought me a better notion about what I was doing. In the course's first year, in 2015, I discovered my like for web technologies, especially Javascript.

The game changer

With everything I had learned in the languages ​​that I used in years and with everything I studied in college, I reinforce a very important detail: I still didn't know how to program.

Maybe I can cover this in another post, but this became evident after a few months. I have a great facility to transform problems and solutions in lines of code, so even without knowledge of the language, with Google and Stack Overflow it was easy for me to make a code that could solve my problem, even without any idea on how to change after few weeks, literally.

October 5, 2015, started a new reality. It was my first day at the internship. I clearly remember the nervousness on the interview and the happiness on the day that Barbara called me to say yes. I was very excited to be starting to work with what I liked.

At Codus, I participate in the company's training in the first months, which combined theory and practice. I learned HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Rails, design patterns, always reading the basic content, participating in workshops, doing practical projects, and getting help from wonderful colleagues and mentors.

At the end of the training, we were allocated directly to the teams in the company's projects. With all the training and everyone's help, I gained confidence quickly and I was able to learn a lot and to be a better developer.

There, I learned how is a developer routine, how to face real challenges, and by that time I was sure that development was exactly what I wanted for my career and for my future.

5 years on 5 paragraphs

I did two years of internship at Codus. During the internship, my performance in college improved, mainly in the development subjects.

There, I had the opportunity to participate in increasingly challenging projects and absorb more responsibilities. It was important for the rapid growth of my experiences.

After I was hired, I continued to absorb more responsibilities. I even participated as a mentor in the training of interns, leading projects technically, discussing ideas with the client, and being the main channel between him and the team. I grew up a lot with the company.

After almost 4 years at Codus, I decided to accept a new challenge and join the Revelo team. Personally, it was a dream to work in a product company, but it would also be a great opportunity to grow together with a company at a very cool stage.

Today, I feel very satisfied with my work. I'm in an incredible market which is HR, I am working in a company with wonderful people in my daily life, I participated in different teams, I built relationships with people from other areas and I continue to improve a lot technically and professionally.

Learnings during career

I have 23 years and a 5-year career. I know I'll have much more to write and this text is just a summary of the beginning of everything. But, I had many cool moments in my career and learned important things that made a big difference in the professional I'm today and I would love to share.

Remember my skill of turning a problem into code? With my professional experience, it became a more powerful tool. Improve the ability to turn problems into algorithms is very important to a developer and anyone can exercise it.

Another very important concept was to understand horizontal and vertical knowledge. I really enjoy reading and learning about programming. In the beginning, I studied a little of many different languages/technologies, expanding my horizontal knowledge, but limiting myself vertically in them. Nowadays, focusing on a few technologies but keeping my eye on others, I optimize my skills and manage to grow better in my career.

I learned the importance of going deep on the business model of the system I'm working on. Learn the rules, processes, laws, common expressions... The closer I am to who is going to use the system, the better.

I learned that working alone is fine but the knowledge exchange of teamwork is unique. Over the years, I've been on different teams. Each person who worked with me formed a little bit of the professional that I am today. Being open to this made me both a better professional and a better person.

I had the opportunity to be accompanied by more experienced professionals, with 1:1, feedbacks, career mentoring, and today I try to do the same with who are starting out. My goal is to show that programming is for everyone and my dream is to mentor people who are starting their careers and help them during their journey, exchanging knowledge and learning with them too.

I never stop having fun with programming. I still developing during my free time, mainly in projects for my hobbies. I have a lot of fun doing these small projects while applying a different pattern or using a cool framework.

Finally, I am very happy with my trajectory so far and I hope I could show how it was and how I have evolved over that time. It was very nostalgic to remember all this. I hope this text can help and inspire yourself in some way.

Be happy and keep writing code!