I actually got into web development kind of accidentally, which is still funny and unbelievable to me.
At the year of 2010. I started a Tourism college (totally not related to web dev, right?). I actually started that college because my high school major was tourism as well. Once I’ve started high school, I was all pumped up, thinking that I’ve found something that I would love doing one day, but as those 4 years passed, I realized that it’s not for me, for so many reasons and I was unhappy now knowing what career I should pursue in life.
Fast forward one year from that, and back to the year of 2010. from the first paragraph, I ended up starting that College of Tourism because I totally had no idea what I should pursue. So it was really, go and finish at least some college as opposed to just staying at home and contemplating what was my life’s purpose (at least career-wise) kind of a situation.
College was basically the same story as high school. Yes, I knew I didn’t like Tourism, and it’s not for me, but at least in that first year I was a relatively ok student: Went to all the classes, learned stuff and passed those exams, as you do. On the second year that all washed out, and I started not going to classes, failing exams, and quite honestly got a little bit depressed as I’ve been studying something that is not at all related to my character, I didn’t like it, and I realized I’ve been wasting time in a wrong place.
The idea I had since my childhood was that in order to be happy and productive (in regards to work), you should find something that you love, that in the end, you don’t treat as just plain work, it’s your passion, an extension of yourself that completes you and makes you happy. I had developed that attitude because as a child there were a plethora of situations where I listened to relatives, family, family friends etc complaining about their jobs, their bosses, overtime.. they were not satisfied and I definitely didn’t want that for myself.
Anyway, let’s get back to the 3rd and final year of my college.
By some weird “divine intervention” — let’s call it that, on that last year of my studies we were presented an optional subject called “An introduction to e-business”. It was a class held by 2 professors (IT graduates, that were managing college’s website and were teaching Microsoft Word and Excell type of subjects — the basic stuff you need in Tourism business I guess).
Those 2 awesome guys (Milos and Borko) and that optional subject literally changed my life. The subject was about the basics of HTML, CSS and just a bit of Javascript. I loved everything about it from the first intro class and was excelling at it (everything else, of course, I continued failing, but that didn’t matter at all for me).
I only went to college for that one class; The rest of the time I spent at my apartment digging as much as I could about it on Google. Started watching youtube videos, downloading and reading PDFs and practicing all day long. I finally found something I love and I know I will be doing until the rest of my life.
I loved everything about it: It was logical, creative, fun to do. You are the creator of something that will be beneficial to other people. I finally found the career path that I love.
One year after that I started taking some work on Odesk and Elance (later they got merged in Upwork) and I started my freelance journey. At that time I still had a few exams remaining and that has been blocking me to fully dedicate to work and learn what I love. But, eventually, I did get that diploma (Which I have no idea where it is at btw).
To fast forward a bit, after two years maybe, I got my Top Rated badge on Upwork and was getting some solid amounts of work, my rate increased and I loved every aspect of it. I continued learning and I still am, as it’s an ever-growing industry as all of you reading know (probably a few javascript frameworks got published during the time of this writing anyway :D).
Now after 7 years of that journey, I am a full-stack developer (React, Vue, Wordpress, Woocommerce and so on) and recently founded a web design and development company called webredone.
I am, of course, still learning, improving and trying to inspire more people to start doing this fun job (Actually let’s not call it job, as, at least for me, it’s not, it’s something I love doing, and don’t mind learning for the years to come).
Let’s end it here, as for someone that’s not a writer, I think this is actually not that bad of an article for a first Dev.to post.
How did you start? :)
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