Getting back into coding for the 5th time. Wish me luck

This will be the 5th time I’m “starting” to code again.

I’ve wanted to get much better at coding for so many years but life always seemed to get in the way. Or maybe I’ve just been lazy.

So, I’m writing on here to create some accountability for myself.

A bit of history:

I started when I was about 12. Wrote QBasic building simple games during a summer coding camp. Then didn’t write a single line of code again for 14 years. In that time, I finished high school, completed an undergraduate degree in architecture, got an MBA, started and failed at several businesses … several! Graphic design companies, an e-commerce business, a recycling company and an alcohol delivery startup are just a few of them. I even did a stint in the family business which I still can’t seem to get out of.

However, it was my most recent business (a health tech startup) that’s drawn me back to coding. I started with a technical cofounder in 2017. We built Electronic Medical Records software for African hospitals and we’ve since had some success - raised VC money, won a few grants and became a household name in the Nigerian health industry. Now we’re on the heels of a fruitful exit. But I never wrote any of our code. The journey was extra frustrating because of this. I’d have to wait ages for devs to push stuff. I’d be unable to give updates to customers and investors because I wasn’t involved in that part of the business. We’d hired several engineers who were just terrible - One even lost us about $5,000 and almost destroyed our company. If I was actively coding through all of this, we’d have been much better off.

The few sprints I spent with my CF and his dev team gave me a taste of what I’d been missing since I was 12 years old. Coding, back then, gave me so much joy. I loved being able to exercise my mind and create things out of nothing. I loved (and still love) computers.

I tried again in 2018 with a bootcamp in Nigeria - didn’t finish it. Tried again in 2019 - dropped it to focus on UI/UX because that’s what my company needed at the time. Joined a free coding course in 2020 but work got so busy at my startup (that’s when we raised VC $$ and got to the final stage of YC interviews) that I couldn’t focus. COVID was also a major distraction for every health tech company at the time. In 2021, planning my wedding took all my time. After that, a family tragedy disrupted everything in my life.

It’s now 2022 and I’m back again. I’ve put all my past failures behind me and I am going to try coding again.

I hope this community will help to hold me accountable as I restart my journey.

Wish me luck