Permit me to set the scene, its 2012, the world it turns out wasn't ending and the Queen of England had just skydived into an Olympic stadium. 5,500 miles away I was being introduced for the first time to introduced to programming with Python. It turns out programming, even in Python, is hard.
At first I was overwhelmed, but then one day I was introduced to a library called Python Turtles. Suddenly I was bitten with the bug, the Boolean operators and the loops had a purpose. Getting that little turtle to roam around the screen and coding it to draw little lines and shapes at will fascinated me and showed me a physical example of the working code. I have created an HTML canvas below with a replica of one of the first programmes I ever enjoyed writing.
More than a decade has passed since those first faltering steps into programming and my life has taken a variety of surprising twists and turns. Through them all I have continued to try to find ways to practice coding and teach myself new and exciting things. Some examples of this over the years:
In my most recent roles I have had the opportunity to spend more time working on websites. I am part of the team that developed and maintains two websites for different charitable organisations. While working on these websites, and subsequently managing them I strongly desired to understand the process better and be better able to work with the websites. So when the opportunity to participate in the IT Online Web and Software Developer training programme arose I was instantly interested.
It has been a very exciting process, while not always easy, it has been very satisfying, and I have found myself amazed at how much there is to learn and yet how quickly I have been able to start to make progress.
I am looking forward to continuing to dig deeper into coding and software development and I am excited to find opportunities where I can continue to grow and develop.
Mini web server controlling infrared remote
Mini JavaScript Calculator for kidney health calculations
A Variety of projects completed during my course.