Learning Journey
This lesson gives some context around the timeline of what learning to code actually looks like.
About Me
- Hi! I’m Ian 👋
- Here is a timeline of my journey learning to code
2011
- August - IT internship racking servers, hanging monitors and fixing printers. 🖨️
- October - Tried learning C# from book. Confusion. 🫤
2012
- May - Graduate from college (did not study computer science) 🎓
- August - Move to Shenzhen, China to teach English 🀄️
2013
- Summer - Decide to seriously pursue career in Software Development with goal to launch an iOS app ⭐️
- September - Auditing Stanford CS106a by watching lectures on YouTube. Trying to make Karel the Robot do things. 🤖
- December - Built breakout (pong) in Java. 🏓 Start showing it to friends and got my girlfriend to start learning to code with me. 👩💻
2014
- April - Take Harvard CS50, studying data structures and algorithms in C. Most difficult course I’ve ever taken. Admittedly would have failed if I had to take in sequence, but I persisted. 💪
2015
- January - Started taking iOS, python, and general software development courses on Treehouse 📱
- March - Accepted into Mobile Makers bootcamp for iOS. Don’t have money to pay for it, so continue on my own. 💲
- October - Start working through Make School iOS track. It’s very focused on launching app and getting real users. 🤯
2016
- January - Consulting gig translating smartwatch software to English ⌚️
- February - Launch iOS game GoChickenGo, a game about a chicken crossing the road 🚀
- April - Move back to Chicago. Started Internship at Mi-Jack writing python, .NET C#, and LOTS of technical documentation 📝
- September - Launch iOS app Chicago Data, a map of crime data in Chicago 🚀
2017
- March - Started at Nerdery building iOS apps. 🤓
- October - Moved over to web development, React js and .NET C# backend due to client need and my willingness to learn.
(lots of growth and learning)
2020-present
2023-present
- January - Start teaching at Discovery Partners Institute 🧑🏫
Progress
- All this is to point out that progress is not a straight line 📈
- This is just 1 step on your journey