Why Coding as a Career?

Before I started on this path to become a Web Developer, I didn’t have a good answer to this question.

Back in 2017, When I was a couple of semesters away from graduating from business school, I stumbled upon some content related to programming. The news spoke about it as being the trend and marketers were pushing courses and programs of all kinds online. For some time, I ignored such content and told myself I wasn’t cut out for it. Even today I am not sure if I will get a job as a developer, but I don’t doubt my worth as a programmer anymore. You see, doubting myself is something I’ve done my entire life, but I’ve never let those ideas paralyze me, perhaps thanks to my Math and Physics teacher who always told us that “the worse effort is that which is never attempted”.

All of that prelude to say that I started programming having no idea why, perhaps thanks to the amazing marketing strategies aimed at my age group, or maybe because of the stubbornness we all have when someone tells us we can’t do something, only in my case it was me saying that to myself, perhaps because I wasn’t satisfied with the career path I had chosen for myself, or all of those together. Whatever reason made me take the first step, is certainly not the same reason that made me stayed.

Programming to some, could be complicated, and I say to some because others have built mental structures through a specific kind of education that made them more fit for such discipline. In general I would say programming is challenging, and I will speak from the perspective of a self taught programmer.

A couple of years into my journey, I can answer to a different question.

What made me stay?

Coding has become a Zen master in my life, testing my ego countless times and making me evaluate my belief system. A good Zen master doesn’t sell you a method to become enlightened, he/she/it wouldn’t even speak of himself as a master at all. A good Zen master teaches without trying to teach and shows you the way to discover that the master you’ve been looking for is within you.

I code because I can feel my brain becoming more flexible and my ego smaller. In your journey through coding you will never be an expert on everything, so you’ll always be the master and the student simultaneously, hence my comparison to Zen masters. One day you know it all, the next day you’re back to zero.

I code for my family, my friends, the world, I code because I enjoy it, and because I think coding will connect me to others in a scale no other field can. Forgive me if I get a bit corny here, but I want to live a life full of meaningful relationships. Connect with genuine, purposeful, loving people, and I think coding will be a good tool to accomplish that.

If you are wondering weather to start coding or not, here is the opinion you didn’t ask for: It is difficult, and at the same time very rewarding. It will make you feel like a complete failure sometimes, and like an expert, some other times. It will test your patience and resilience every single day, so make sure you are extremely curious about it, enough to put up with all that. Look at it as the moment before you step into a forest. You know that it is full of potentially dangerous creatures and landscapes, but you also know it could be the adventure of your life. Just make sure it does feel like an adventure and not like a duty. Trust me, a subtle change of mentality will make a big difference.

Thanks for making it to the end of my blog. Here is one last thing I will say to you if you feel adventurous enough to walk into the forest “Trust the process”.