Hello~! :D

I'm Joel, and it's my first day working on my software development bootcamp's course work! I'm starting this blog so you can read about my journey, and get to know a little about me along the way, but also so that you can see that you can do it too! :)

You'll have your own reasons for wanting to pursue this, but for me, the most important reasons are:
1) I'm tired of just being financially independent - I want to be financially free. I've been living paycheck to paycheck with only enough money saved to avoid homelessness for one month if anything happened to my job. Due to this, I'm worried I'll never retire, like most of the elders I grew up around, or worse - become homeless in my old age, like I see happening on the streets almost every day. I won't live that life anymore, so here is where I stand and do something about it.
2) I have ADHD, and I struggle with the effects every single day. I want to help people that struggle with this too by using code, particularly the effects that impulsivity can have on finances, and a very deep memory issue:

I used to have trouble with managing my finances - I want to build a budgeting app for people that need help being more financially disciplined using a zero-dollar envelope budget model, teaching them about their net worth, and giving lessons on how to improve one's credit. This has been done, but they're more for the people that fit into the average traits of users. I want this to be for those who will benefit the most from it: The people recognized by society as "lower class people".
I have trouble with organizing my life and remembering appointments/tasks I need to take care of - I dream of building a personal assistant one day that can remind us of tasks we need to take care of, and goals we set, keeping us on track along the way.
I struggle with memorizing numbers or lists that have more than 5 digits/items, and it's worse when something unexpected happens that takes my attention off of the information. I want that personal assistant to take spoken notes where ever I am, whatever I'm doing, because at any given moment, my hands are full and I can't write it down.

Anyway, enough about my goals - it's confession time... So, today is actually the second day, not the first. The first didn't really consist of any real work or learning, just a set of video guides to get my computer set up with tools, browsers, and web resources like W3 schools, Stack Overflow and the like, informing me about them along the way. I had already learned about these resources and completed most of these steps when learning Javascript, SQLite, and HTML basics on my own, so today is what really counts as "The First Day" because we're going over HTML in a formally structured way. :D

Let's go on to the videos on the next entry!