Becoming a Web Developer in Just Twenty Years
Everyone’s in a rush these days. We need immediate results. I’m not different, really. For those of us who have a dream, like becoming a web developer, we might ask, “If I study really hard, how long will it take to be competent enough to get a job?” And in fact, one of the selling points of coding bootcamps is that they can take someone with little or no knowledge, and get them ready for a job in a short time.
But if anyone asks me how long it took me to become a web developer, I’ll tell them the truth. It took me 20 years. And I’m OK with that, because while the fastest way from point A to point B is a straight line, it’s usually also the least interesting.
The 1980s: Early Origins
I’ve always loved computers, ever since I was a kid in the 80s, playing the original “Oregon Trail” on my uncle’s computer, or learning how to program BASIC on Apple IIe computers in summer school. Back then, in elementary school, I remember thinking about the future. I thought that one day, we would be able to turn on our TVs and see any TV show that we wanted, on demand. This was probably around 1984 or 1985, long before Netflix or Hulu. I wouldn’t have dreamed of anything like the Internet, and I certainly would never have imagined that it would become such an important part of how I would work and play.
The 1990s: University and the Internet
Fast forward 10 years. In late 1994 or early 1995, I remember getting my first email address at my school, and trying to explain email to my family and friends. I remember some of them asking me if each mail would cost money. I told them it was all free, and there were people all around the world sharing knowledge. It was an amazing new frontier. We used Archie to search, until this new company, Yahoo! entered the scene, and I remember a magazine asking if Yahoo! and Netscape, both newcomers to the scene, would “ruin the Internet.” It seems so quaint now. As the Twentieth Century drew to a close, there was a great deal of optimism about the possibilities of the “Information Superhighway” back then. In some ways, the Internet has exceeded our greatest hopes, but it has also created problems and disappointments that we couldn’t have forseen back then.
Within a couple years, I was creating my own websites. And while many people might be ashamed to admit it, I won’t lie. I thought making sites with the <blink> and <marquee> tags were cool. Soon, CSS, Javascript, and DHTML would arrive. I created my own site in the early 2000s, called nichibei.net, which was supposed to be a site about Japanese-American cultural exchange. But I had no vision of what I wanted to say, other than a desire to build a website. It was one of my many early online projects that would fizzle out.
The early 2000s: Living in Asia
I was interested in Computer Science, but opted instead to major in Asian Studies. I learned Chinese in college, and after I graduated, Japanese. But even then, I always kept building my computer skills. I worked in the International Student Affairs Office at my university, and as I sent out multiple application packets to the same people, I realized that we needed a better way to track application requests. So I taught myself MS Access, and I designed a new application system, which tracked applicant requests, produced mailing labels and letters, and provided reports about our application statistics. Although I won multiple awards for my Chinese fluency, my first job after graduation had nothing to do with Chinese. I managed a database for a major educational skills competition.
Over the next several years, I would build diverse skills that would prove useful to web development, but web development itself was something that I often thought I’d pursue as a career “someday.” In the meantime, I went to Japan in 2003, and spent over seven years there, teaching English, translating, and eventually running my own self-hosted blog, “The Wayfarer Blog1.” It was a simple blog for family and friends, but it taught me a lot. I blogged about my life in Japan, and my burgeoning interest in photography. On the technical side, I learned about MySQL and PHP. I remember that one theme I was using had CSS float issues with IE, so my pictures appeared at the bottom of the page, instead of on the side of the post. I was using a Mac, so I couldn’t test it, so I stayed up all night chatting with my sister, and I asked her to check the site while I made adjustments.
2011 and Beyond: Returning to the U.S.
I spent February 2011, Chinese New Year, at my wife’s parent’s house, in China. We’d just left Tokyo for good, but we would swing back into Japan for a couple days to stay with some friends. For about three weeks, I studied Python. I made a few programs, including a disk cloning app. I had fun, but without a degree in Computer Science, and all of my experience with Asian languages, I assumed I’d work in some area of international student support or study abroad…or possibly international business. As it turns out, I ended up working in Educational Technology. I’m currently a Blackboard Administrator. In addition to knowing Blackboard, my job requires knowledge of the Unix command line, Oracle SQL, and I also help edit our department’s website.
So I have all of these pockets of knowledge: front-end development, database design and administration, and a strong desire to learn more. But what I’ve lacked until now is a way to bring all of these elements together. Before I moved to Japan, I lived in Seattle. I went back to visit with family and friends there a few months ago. And while I was there, I met with one of my friends, who owns her own business. She told me about the problems she’s had working with web developers, who were not very knowledgeable or professional, by my standards. And I realized that I love web development, and it’s something that I’ve always been interested in, but I never had the confidence to really say, “This is it! This is what I’m going to do!” But when I heard about her struggles, I realized that I have a lot of knowledge and potential. I just need to find a way to bring all of my unique knowledge, skills, and experience together in a way that will allow me to confidentially reach out and help others. This summer, I’ve found an opportunity to do just that. I’ll be discussing that in my next post.
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