I Am Not New

There are times in life when you just have to look back, and even though you have been in an industry for a long time, there will still be people who think they are better than you or look at you different because your title is lower on the totem pole than theirs. This is a generalized observation, not directed to anyone, and I not only see it in my life, I see it with other developers in the industry. The Web “game” is not new to me, I have been at it on-and-off for around 20 years, I may not have gained all the knowledge there is about the Web, because you know, shit happens, but I know enough that I feel I shouldn’t be looked down upon as a newbie in the game.

Humble Beginnings

Right around the time when the Web started really becoming a thing, 1995–1997, is when I picked up on building Web pages. I played with QBasic first because of Snake, yeah, you remember Snake don’t you? I don’t even recall what machines we were using at the time, the time being 7th grade, so it was pre-1999. Maybe apple’s? Anyways, when I discovered that I could write a small program and have the computer talk back to me and change the prompts to different colors, I fell in love with programming. I always had a computer, my first was a Tandy that ran dos and man-oh-man the days of playing hangman were the greatest.

HTML for Dummies Circa 1996–1997

After discovering QBasic, I picked up HTML. Remember that book up there? I read it cover to cover and than read it some more. I was the only one out of all my friends outside of school that knew how to build Web pages, at a ripe young age nonetheless. It started with Expages, and than using a WYSIWYG became super boring. I wanted to write my own code, so I switched over to Notepad, no indentation, and everything in uppercase, because that is what you did in the early to mid 90s when writing for the Web lol. Geocities and Angelfire became my best friends, and domains like cjb.net were the only alternative to an 11 year old without a job that couldn’t afford.Things were great, never did I think a career doing this was a thing.

Somewhere In The Middle

As time went by, I was still building Web pages on an old P4 Windows ’95 machine, not a good look, even for a hobbyist. I guess you can say I am an OG when it comes to the Web, or an OC (original coder). When I started, fixed headers and footers were iframes with no borders. Talk about old school. I built Web pages all through high school. One was about a production company that my friends and I started called Downriver Productions, another one was for a horrorcore group called Dark Lotus. And before that were sites I built for other personal things, like leopard geckos. I love leopard geckos 🐲! <– that is a dragon, but you get the point.

2004

My senior year of high school I decided that this was something I could probably do for a career, but didn’t know it was an actual thing, I just knew you could get a degree in Web development. I was under the impression that unless you worked for a big dot com like Google or a Fortune 500, that a gig as a Web designer, yes, we were designers or masters at the time, was not an attainable thing. Needless to say, life got in the way and I dropped out of college, BUT, I didn’t give up on the Web.

Somewhere Almost To The End

Even though I dropped out of college and tried to go back a couple different times didn’t mean I stopped writing code. I freelanced between 2006–2007. The name of my company was called Black Star Designs, it was legit. I even went down to the county clerks office to register the DBA. I felt pretty stellar telling people I owned my own business, but it was more pressure than fun and not what I expected. There is no more Black Star Designs.

I did however build a couple bad ass sites for two local tattoo shops in my area. Now these were bad ass for the time, they would get laughed out of any shop at the present moment. Tables for layout used to be a thing, believe me.

At that time, I put Web stuff on the back burner. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life honestly. I wanted to make money, and make it quick. Side note: I did not turn in to a drug dealer, just for the record. I just wanted to make money, being broke and living from check to check is not fun. I got odd jobs here and there and decided to get my CDL class A so I could drive trucks because I thought that was the way to get money, boy was I wrong.

One Door Closes, Another One Opens.

The end of 2011 is when I decided to give up my career as a garbage man and see if I could get my old job back…driving a truck, but for a company I was comfortable with. It was during that time that I decided to fully commit myself to school and enrolled back in with something to prove and to kick ass and take names. The curriculum was meh, I truly knew more than the instructors when it came to the Web space just because I did keep on happenings even though I wasn’t actively writing code, that is part the reason I struggle with JavaScript to this day. JS was not as prevalent as it was when I started in the industry as a youngster, and even freelancing and working as a contractor for a local Web company, I never needed it.

No one seems to believe me, but it is true. Those are the main reasons why JavaScript is my weakness, but I am trying to learn more and grasp it with every day that goes by. I want to be a bad ass JS developer, even though my strength is in the UI layer (HTML and CSS).

2015

The middle of last year I graduated from school with an Associates of Applied Science with a major in Web Development after I finished my co-op of 9 months at DTE Energy. I left school with the highest honors, Magna Cum Laude with a 3.96 G.P.A., and was awarded the “Dean’s Academic Achievement Award” for my field of study. Very proud that I busted my ass to get where I did with my college career, a bachelor’s may be in the making, I haven’t decided.

2016

In life, shit happens. That is just the way things work. If I could have dedicated all my time and energy learning EVERY SINGLE THING about the Web that there is to know, I wouldn’t be where I am today, and where I am today is working for the biggest utility company in Michigan as an associate software developer (junior front-end). There are things I don’t know. I don’t know JS front-to-back, or every media query that is out there. Does that make me new or any less of a developer than the next? I sure as hell don’t think so.

Present

Today, I am a part of many user groups in the Detroit and Ann Arbor area where I speak, T.A., volunteer, and teach. I help organize events like Global Accessibility Awareness Day and volunteer for conferences like CodeMash and Self.Conf. I have come along way through my journey, and the journey is only getting started. Battling mental health is a struggle to keep focused on the Web and writing code, but when I find the time to fit it in, I do. My goals are grand, and I plan to learn the shit out of JavaScript and be the best, all around, front-end dev like my peers I look up to. I am not new, this is not new, I don’t know what I don’t know. I am a developer.

I am a developer!