Becoming A Developer

Hit another milestone with the NFT Project that I head up.

Since the other Members of my Team wish to remain anonymous, I don't share any of this code in my public Repo, but I have gained quite a bit of experience--just by sheer necessity.

Quick backstory of how I came to head up an NFT Project--even before I'd ever decided to attend (full-time) the 4+ month (Full Stack) Software Engineering Bootcamp, starting in July of this year, and graduating mid-November....

Since my background's in "FinTech" I was introduced to investing, and even technical analysis, which led to many hours spent navigating charts and indicators on TradingView, and continued down my usual rabbit hole, eventually finding the more esoteric edges of an environment.

This led to crypto (which also led me to development), to NFTs, to participating in DAOs, to a specific Project which resonated with me perfectly. I usually gravitate towards some sort of Leadership role and this was no exception.?

I saw that this particular Project was actually a "Collection of Collections", but with several very cool "core" sets of NFTs within a few collections, and...there was basically one person managing the entirety of it. Needless to say, they were happy to have me, and I was happy to have happened upon it.

Granted, once I got "a look under the hood" and "behind the curtain," there was a (nearly) un-Mindmappable menagerie of ideas and vision and... well, this was a "creative type" that was also a "self-taught" developer, working on a platform that only recently come into existence (i.e. cw721: the CosmWasm replication + enhancements to the ERC-721 standard--which, as you may already know, is the "modern day" basis for NFT creation).

A cacophony of collections (and, as I would soon find out, pretty convoluted code), to be sure. No problem! I love organizing and mobilizing like-minded people, and pretty much everyone else within this fairly tight-knit Community (several hundred people, within a blockchain that had only just begun NFTs a few months prior to when I hit the scene).?

So, yeah, it checked all the boxes on my (internal, mostly ambiguous) list of "challenges that I love".

Unfortunately, this Project's (one) Leader became over-leveraged throughout the crypto Bull Market, and went immediately awol once the Market(s) took a sharp downturn in May of this year (2022). It was what they call in the crypto / NFT space a(n unmalicious, but potentially equally devastating) "rug pull". The Project, the Community--including myself--felt like we'd become a Ronin: a master-less Samurai. If you've been in or around crypto for even a little bit, you probably know the disorienting feelings of denial and even betrayal felt when you "get rugged".

This realization came just days before our recently-scheduled "AMA" was set to commence, where we were going to espouse all of my (some would say "brilliant"--I was certain that word would be tossed around, with Goat emojis and big-brain memes, et al) plans and contributions and concrete vision for "our" next steps. It would also essentially legitimize me, as a relative newcomer to the Community. As opposed to a healthy measure of skepticism typically doled out to anyone new to a scene--especially if they also start talking about "what we should be doing"--and this, like most everything in the space, is also scaled-up in crypto.

And yes, I know I said "quick backstory"--this is the short version of all of the...unforeseen challenges that would soon become the only constant (and also, very nearly, un-Mindmappable as well).

Coinciding with what had become a growing desire to switch out of an up-that-point very lucrative career and field, and venture off to become a "Developer".

My experiences here, where I was (possibly?) the only person on the planet that was willing to take on an "Owner" role (ultimately, I took 4 other hand-picked Leaders from the Community and became our de facto Leader, although I divvied everything up so that we're etc 20% Owners--hence, my common refrain to "bring 100% of your 20% (so that you're equally represented) to this Project" (and yes, I see no problem with a parenthetical inside of a parenthetical (well, providing that they're not "out of hand" (and that they're properly closed!)))).?

I've never given too much (ok, not more than 50%) credence to odds anyway (or else I'd probably still be a professional poker player, or--oh, right, the quick version). However, I have gained some insight and additional appreciation for "non-fungible" uniqueness. One of one (1/1). And for whatever other reasons, I was intent (and content) to surmount this scaled-up section of society, and either un-rug us or (metaphorically) die on the side of the mountain. Rare air, indeed.

It didn't take me long to realize both just how much I didn't know and that--in order to really build even a fraction of all of the cool (some might even say "brilliant" although that's certainly not expected) things that I had planned--I was going to need to learn how to become a Developer myself.

It was enough of a prevailing certainty to cause me to "go all-in". This, for me, meant that I was to quit my job where I'd been putting in 14-16-hour days; get accepted into and then graduate from a tough Bootcamp; and then to utilize my newly-adopted "side hustle" role as the Leader of a (formerly) "big fish" (in a non-Ethereum pond) NFT Project in order to have a "vehicle" that both forces me to learn, and benefits from, my own development as a Developer.

The bullet-point TL;DR is that we've finally, and with much help:

? successfully migrated our main Collection's contracts to a new (and hopefully improved) blockchain

• started to attract other Developers and Creators (builders and artists that're above-and-beyond better than I would've ever hoped for when I first took over)
• had a series of successful attempts on the chain's Testnet to "instantiate" new items (aka "mint new NFTs")
• while also "porting" over the Project's React-built website to work with the new contracts, on the new chain, where the Community will soon be able to mint new NFTs again
• and quite a bit more....

In fact, I've attached a screenshot of a 20-page PDF (big font, lots pictures, you can tell that I wrote it) that explains exactly how to 'Execute' (from our 5 different contracts that're written in Rust, requiring Docker and WebAssembly integration, that all need to work together, with the React website on the front end), and I understand it.

Well, I understand it at least enough to explain it to 4 other non-Developers who each reside in a different Country, in a different timezone, and who have "been through it", this start of my "how to become a Developer" journey, the whole time. Not the end-all, be-all (I wanted to have a game demo out by the end of the year, initially, although there have been strides made on that as well--it's going to require more time, and hopefully much more help), but worth noting.

I attached some screenshots, but I'm anticipating (like, based on odds--which I'm reserving the right to selectively use when they're not stacked against me--and stuff) much bigger and better things, now that I'm starting to have some pockets of light showing up amidst a map that used to be completely shrouded, and which used to leave me completely in the dark.?

It's also incredibly liberating to know how to "zero-to-one" a computer program (ex: instead of feeling threatened by, say, a ChatGPT, to feel excited and empowered about employing it, to create and build otherwise impossible applications)--especially in a digital field that isn't necessarily subject to the standard, Newtonian laws of physics that the rest of the (physical) world must adhere to.