Lets open the box of secrets...
Here is how I became a
front-end and responsive developer
The first computer I saw was a big old Schneider which looked like a multi-story stereo. It must have been 1983/1984 or around that time and it was probably almost as big as I. My father has always been a complete tech nerd and so my brother and I grew up with computer technology from a very early age. Our favourity one was a Sharp with a plotter (which was later also offered as plotter for the C64 - just fyi). I can still hear it rambling whenever it was 'printing' out our favourite 'image': a racing car 🏎. I can't remember how many of these prints we had, but it must have been lots and lots of them.
We were the first in our friendship group, in our classes, in our schools to have a computer, later a laptop, not because we had money, but because our father had his priorities set on the future and not on holidays on southern shores. People thought that was weird back then, I guess. I have to tell you, my father was a vicar - not the typical job to be crazy about computers, I know, but he has also always been a very scientific person, which maybe makes it a bit more plausible.
We children didn't really care if we went to Spain or anywhere abroad or not. We loved the computers, were enraptured by them. I remember my brother opening the old ones up to look at what was inside and how they worked and taking them apart and me, well I was more interested in the programs. How they ran, what they did, how they could be manipulated and how I could make things on the screen change.
My first own computer was a C64 and the next one a C128. Suddenly I did not have to write by hand anymore, it was so much faster. I could write down stories which were 100 pages long or more in days... It was perfect! I still have some floopies lying around with all my works from childhood and teenage years somewhere. Not that anyone would like to read them. 😆
Then Tim Berners-Lee made the internet accessible to everone and Microsoft Office came along. I started to work as a foreign language correspondent and translator. I remember us running around the office with disks from one computer to the other because there were no networks yet. Only one computer in the library had internet access and could send emails. Crazy times. I was kind of a computer doctor. Whenever someone had problems with their documents, I was asked for help. Everything was still new for many of my colleagues who had worked with typewriters all their life and had only just started using computers.
I still often ask myself why I never went to uni and read IT or went into the IT business, but I guess I was kind of satisfied with the way it was. I was always involved with IT. In one company I helped building the network and was then maintaining the server. In the next company, I was the contact and go to person for everything IT in Germany, as the main office was in the USA and Germany did not have an 'official' IT department. Then there was this company which had an IT department, but it was just faster to call Florina for help if there were problems with the printer or some hardware or software issue, because it just was faster because I was around. And then I became an inductor and trainer.
So, I guess it was just the next step in my 'evolution' as an 'IT person' to learn how to code. As I am a really interested person by nature and am always looking for new things to learn, I was caught hook, line and sinker five minutes into
Matt Delac's
free coding session. No way around it. I had to learn how to code. And now, here I am: Starting soon with the
React Workshop, eager for each new lesson and already dreading that the last one may come to soon. However, I guess, with coding, there will always be something to learn. Although, one thing I know... I will miss Matt's entertaining and well presented lessons and the challenges at their end. Thank you, SheCodes, for this incredible experience! Chapeau!
