I attempted to code in highschool around my sophmore year. It didn’t last too long. After picking up encyclopedia sized “C++ for Dummies book” I quickly decided that programming was not for me after having made it only around 20 pages in. It seemed like a different language (it was), and I made no attempt to find a simpler language (or even a website such as Codeacademy).
Fast-forward to December 2017 - I graduated from college with a degree in Philosophy Specializing in Philosophy of Medicine and a Minor in Biology. I thoroughly enjoyed my major, but my end goal was always law school. I loved my philosophy class Formal Logic, which dealt with conditions, biconditionals, truth tables, and the rest. I noticed that a giant portion of the LSAT (the dreaded exam every pre-law student used to have to take to get into a law school - some schools are now accepting GRE scores) was essentially formal logic.
Shortly after graduating I decided to get my feet wet and work at a law firm to decide what type of law I wanted to go into. I ended up at a law firm in Birmingham, AL as a Litigation Paralegal. What began with excitement soon turned into anxiousness as I began to realize that not only did I dislike what I imagined my future self to be doing, I noticed that the attorneys that I worked for also were often less than exuberant about their own day-to-day tasks. There was an aspect of creativity and building things that was missing from the legal.
I began to look elsewhere. I had an idea for an iOS application just prior to graduation, but had never taken steps to make it. On the contray, I was looking for someone else that I could “partner” who had the requisite skills and needed a project. Now however, I was looking for a way out. I downloaded Xcode and began a course on Udemy. I found that my same passion for formal logic and puzzle solving was present in programming.
Programming in Swift was great, but I soon found limited by learning a language constrained to iOS devices - I needed to hit the web. I began looking towards websites like Codeacademy, freecodecamp, and others to learn JavaScript. This growing passion lead me to look towards these things called “Coding Bootcamps” that I had heard about every now and again.
Given that I have a full-time job that I must maintain to pay for things such as food, rent, and other utilities, I knew I could not quit and run off to a full-time onsite bootcamp. I searched hard for a bootcamp that had both the best reviews, flexible course schedule, and allowed for me to choose a no-interest financing option. FlatIron checked all of the boxes for me, so I began the Online Bootcamp Prep Course. Not too long after I put down my deposit for the actual course, which I cannot recommend enough.