The Tech Trek: Embrace the Challenges of Becoming a Tech Professional

“Tech is not meant for you.” “You can’t succeed in tech.” “You aren’t even good in Maths” “You are well-known for having bad grades”. Have you ever heard these from someone? Probably from yourself? In my case, it was my own voice in my head. My journey as a software developer has been filled with ups and downs, many self-doubts, frustrations, and confusion. But with all these came so many rewards that made me appreciate the struggles I have experienced. What do I mean? We will discuss this in a bit. Since I can boldly say that 99.9% of developers at some point in their career (and possibly even right now) have faced major blockers or challenges, I believe it’s a good idea to start this discussion with the frustrations and difficulties that come with starting a career as a developer or as any tech professional really. It is no secret how high-in-demand tech skills are and this makes them great skills to have. However, you will face many difficulties along the way. I will use my experience as a case study. In January 2022, I wrote my first “Hello World” in HTML. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I had never heard of code editors. I thought that developers probably saved their code in a notepad and uploaded it somehow to the internet. I learned HTML and CSS in 2 weeks without much practice and I felt like I was going to be a ‘tech sis’ in the next month. Well, I met JavaScript. And that was my first frustration. Believe me, there were times when I just wanted to quit. “I don’t think my brain is meant for this!”. JavaScript reminded me of how poorly I performed in my very first encounter with programming (Pascal) in my 2nd year of university. It was bad (lol). Fast-forward to this moment as I write, I don’t see myself doing anything else. Why? How did this happen? <a href="https://medium.com/@wineshuga/the-tech-trek-embrace-the-challenges-of-becoming-a-tech-professional-f1a72b8b2bff">Website</a>