The beginning

I accidentally started coding at the age of 13 when I saw in a science mag for youth this cool tech called ARDUINO, Arduino is an open-source hardware and software company, project and user community that designs and manufactures single-board microcontrollers and microcontroller kits for building digital devices that use c++ as the default programming language, then I started making some researches on this language called c++, this marked the start of an unforgettable journey

Hello World

I still remember that day when after days of struggling I finally manage to link MinGW with Codeblocks and compiled my first program, this was a wonderful moment in my journey as it was the first program I ever made witch gave an output.

Hello problems

After completing the hello world program, I felt invincible as if I could do anything, god...how wrong was I.
C++ is clearly not an easy programming language for a complete beginner like me at that time, I felt so worthless sometimes and almost gave up.

Others

Another problem I faced when I started coding was: OTHERS, I tried to compare myself with others so much that it almost destroyed my love for coding

Learning too much, coding less

When I started learning to code, I wanted to have as much knowledge as possible and already start making Arduino project, but later I found out that this approach was, well...super duper wrong, I sometimes skipped exercises on tutorials so that I can just complete the chapter and go to another without a problem, this was the source of all my confidence problem

Making projects

Later when I discovered what I was doing wrong, I started making projects with c++ as I was starting to completely fall in love with the language.

To git or not to git

I later started learning other programming languages such as javascript and PHP as I also wanted to build cool websites and brag about them to my friends, this is the time when I discovered Github and this technology called 'version control', which could make me manage and view the current, past and upcoming versions of my apps, as I had nothing of real relevance which would push me to use this tech, I just ignored it.

Google Code-in and the power of Linux

Google Code-in(GCI) is a global competition for high school and middle school students that introduces to contributing to open-source, I decided to participate and do tasks for an organization called 'fedora project'. Fedora is a distribution of Linux, so I had to install it so that I could complete tasks easily, i first installed ubuntu to test if it dual boots windows 10 and after a while, I decided to keep Ubuntu as my default desktop and development OS.
GCI made me feel confident i my skills because at the end of the competition i was in the leaderboard(pretty much the top 20) in my organization.

Problems I face as a teen coder

Not being taken seriously:

When you are 15 y.o and want to ask for help or collaboration to a nearby developer, nobody takes you seriously and just thinks you are just YASK(Yet Another Script Kiddie) who only knows to display text and thinks he is great, this is a very big issue I have faced

Not having time

When you code and still go to school you almost always lack the time or the energy to code anything relevant

Some projects i have made

• A clone of the pacman game using the lua programming language
• A todo chrome extension with js and a todo api
• A weather forecast web app
• A database engine with c
• A set of custom linux commands
• A personal portfolio
• A shodan Scanner
• A spell checker for writters
• etc...

Thanks for reading this article,i hope to see you soon in an upcoming article