How did you get into coding?

"I never knew what coding was." "Coding just never came up in my childhood" "I thought I was bad with computers"

In case you are wondering, it is never too late to learn to code.

I asked ruby on rails community members how they got into coding. It looks like the common factors are an adult, often a teacher or family member, who recommended they try it out. This happened at various stages and ages, some still at school, others fully embarked on a different career.?

Once started, they discovered how much they enjoyed working with logic, and how it satisfied their creativity more than they expected.

What surprised me, only two of them have computer-related degrees!

Here's what they said.

Selena

At 27, I met someone who was a software engineer - I had no idea what that was, had never seen or heard of code and was shocked to learn that you could literally talk to your computer through a command line. The person I met inspired me, taught me, mentored me & introduced me to their network.

The thing I love about coding is working with really smart people to understand and solve really complex problems

I had done well at school and went to uni but coding just never came up in my childhood

Bekki

When I found out I could tell computers what to do and they would do it, I was amazed!? I started in robotics and moved to mobile/web development over time.? The iOS SDK changed the trajectory of my entire career.

Caitlin

I thought I was "bad with computers", and decided to take a few HTML, CSS & JS courses for interest's sake. Once I started I realized that it really appealed to my creative side, as well as my problem-solving mind, and I dove in after that!

Brittney

While working in customer service (my first job after college), I noticed the dire need for programmers in the world. I attended various coding workshops, inspired by others who had no prior knowledge. I graduated from a bootcamp and now have 6 years of experience as a software engineer. I enjoy coding for its problem-solving and creativity. Despite industry criticisms, I stay because my unique perspective contributes to building applications. I was always technically inclined but lacked guidance and role models. I firmly believe that to enter tech, one must see representation and possibilities.

Shannon

What it came down to for me was money and flexibility. I took one .NET coding course in uni for funsies, but I graduated with an arts degree, got a stressful job that paid scarcely more than I was making in the part time jobs that put me through school, and saw little to no opportunities for growth beyond eventually logging enough years to move into management, which is not for me. I had the opportunity to tinker (badly) with a bit of web design in that job though, and conveniently it was around that time that a couple coding bootcamps had opened in my city and there was a lot of demand for programmers. I hadn't really considered coding up to that point because I thought of myself as a "creative" and didn't see programming as a creative pursuit, but my small foray into web design was enough to convince me it was worth a try. It was my dream to work remotely and travel, but still have financial security, which a career in coding offered - and I was immensely satisfied to learn just how creatively stimulating coding can be!

Aurelie

In HS I wanted to orient myself in game design but I have been discouraged by my mom and counselors at school because girls don’t do that and I shouldn’t let my good grades in French and Hist/Geo go to waste…

Ended up in maths because it was at the time the only curriculum that would have helped me bounce back to anything related to computers.

Also being in the Bay Area helped me understand that I could still make a career in tech when I was seeing all these 40yo women switching to tech! I have heard many inspiring journeys :)

Carla

As a millennial I grew up with the rise of technology and I was lucky to have a mom who saw how interested I was and supported me to always go a try new tech stuff, I remember her going on debt to get me a pentium iii because it was the newest fastest thing?

I knew I wanted to do something with tech so for college I applied to computer engineering and also electronic engineering, I got in computer engineering and also luckily I liked it because I went in not even knowing what programming was!

Kaja

I never knew what coding was and assumed it was something boring with excel sheets. What definitely distanced me from it was that the only kids in my high school that would be interested in it were boys who had very unsocial behavior towards girls like me (probably what now would be considered incels) so there were no touching points with coding until very much later. First time it caught my interest was when I told a friend that in philosophy my favorite subject was formal logic. He told me that I should try programming because it had some similarities.

The second factor that pushed me closer to it was when there was a need. My husband needed a website for his hostel and hired a freelancer for that. The freelancer could not finish it but offered to show my husband how to finish up the website himself. My husband, absolutely not interested or curious, nudged me with the words “you are smart with this stuff you should try to finish it”.

I did and then later I wanted to get the website more up in the Google search results and went down the whole SEO rabbit hole. It included adding some JavaScript inline into the html code and it looked more interesting and mysterious to me. I wanted to understand it better and looked for coding workshops in my city. They were all very expensive. And I had no money. But then a friend told me about rails girls workshops and this is where I really really fell in love with Ruby and rails.

Emily

I had a physics teacher in high school who encouraged me to explore my interest in math and science by attending a mechanical engineering summer program. I honestly hated mechanical engineering, but we did one coding lesson during the program, and when I got home, I spent the rest of the summer learning Python, HTML, and JavaScript.

If that teacher hadn’t seen potential in me, or my parents hadn’t been supportive of me attending that program, then I don’t think I would have considered a career in STEM at all because I didn’t know anybody, let alone any women, who worked as engineers or software developers.

The next year I took my first computer science class and once again had a very supportive teacher. I went on to major in computer science (CS) in university and have worked in tech for my entire adult life. I still love to code, but as I’ve gotten older, the thing I find most valuable is honestly the quality of life that working in tech has given me. I’m about to take a very long maternity leave (by US standards lol), and I feel so grateful for the stability that my job is offering me and my family right now.

And it’s all because the adults in my life encouraged my interest in STEM ~15 years ago