My intention for this first post is to use it as an introduction, to kind of explain some relevant background information about myself and quantify why it is that I am starting this blog.
So, hi, my name is Taylor. I am 25 years old, and finally(ish) starting my journey into the world of pseudocode; into the conversely cold and inviting, logical yet artful, and rewarding but unforgiving machine language of computers. But, just to be clear – this is not my first venture into the world of code. I started coding at an early age, my earliest relevant memories being customizing my Myspace page so that I would be the envy of my friends (I was), and changing it to reflect however I was feeling that day, as well as working my way up to writing full-on web pages in HTML and CSS. I can’t give you an exact timeline for this, but around then I also had a couple of books teaching Java. While I did make it all the way through one of them, I didn’t do anything with the information and it has been lost to time. A couple years after that, in high school, I took four semesters of a programming class that mostly revolved around a version of BASIC, and eventually introduced me into c# and a little bit of robotics. I had a lot of fun coding in that class, and I was always adding features to my programs, going above and beyond expectations as well as assisting my fellow developers by giving them pointers to fix various bugs in their programs. After I graduated high school, however, I just stopped.
I’m not too keen on going into the details at this time, but shortly after high school I lost my mother and fell into a deep depression and my life spiraled into a vicious cycle of work, sleep, and not doing anything remotely productive in between. My family drifted apart, and my father started using hard drugs to numb the pain, eventually becoming homeless and making himself very unpleasant to be around. And I just, sort of gave up. I have always held a job, but I didn’t care that the jobs I was working weren’t a good match for me – I just knew I had to stay busy and keep myself distracted. So I’ve been a workaholic for as long as I can remember.
Anyway, that’s enough about the past – let’s talk about my reason for being here, explaining myself to nobody in particular, and for all intents and purposes – probably nobody. I have several traits that I think would make me well-suited for a career in development. Firstly, I love technology and I love the thought of a better, more advanced future. I love learning, reading, and writing. I have always had an affinity for computers, going all the way back to ‘rescuing’ old computers I found next to dumpsters in my childhood adventures, and setting up my own dial-up accounts so that I could use the internet. I love the idea that knowledge is virtually infinite and that, especially in software development, the learning never stops and I can grow with this knowledge, as well as use it to help people. Learning to code professionally is something that I should have started a long time ago, but I don’t believe that it is too late for me to jump in. I’m diving in, head first, to finally enter a career that I will be happy with and ultimately get more out of life. It won’t be easy, but it will be worth it.
That’s all for this post, but next time I will be going into the details on how I plan on starting this journey and hopefully not losing myself among all the ones and zeroes on the way.
Taylor's Code Blog 