Growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was introduced to web development at a pretty early age. My first introduction to a Mac was the thick, white block that we had to plug back into the charging cart after each lesson in middle school to make sure it was charged enough for the next class to use. I vividly remember the steps as if it were yesterday—push the white power button, wait for the satisfying chime, and watch the login screen appear. I’d enter my 5-digit password that was assigned to each child. We kept the same password until after high school, but I could never forget mine.
It’s truly unreal to me that society has advanced this quickly with technology development. The slickness of computer monitors and the high-definition quality of pictures represent progress that would have seemed like witchcraft to earlier generations. Having such powerful technology accessible to millions of people was unimaginable back then.
While technology has made tremendous breakthroughs in medicine and forensics, developments in mobile devices will always be extremely impressive to me. This evolution from those chunky school computers to today’s smartphones feels particularly relevant to my coding aspirations. Before the 1990s, there were no apps that could deliver groceries if you were too sick to go outside. Don’t understand a language? Your cellphone’s translator app handles that instantly. When people say there is an app for everything, it’s true. Having that accessibility is remarkable, even if it’s just to watch cat videos.
Not only do these devices fit in your pocket, but they’ve become the modern-day lifeline for most of us. They provide an instant connection that can give you the best day or the worst day of your life. Seeing how apps have transformed daily life is exactly what drives my interest in learning to build them myself.
I have patience and confidence that my goals will be achievable, though they’re very dependent on my efforts after this course. There are so many layers to coding, and I’m realistic about the challenge ahead. My two major goals are to build my own app from concept to publication and to find a financially stable career in this field. I’m aware that development typically takes 4-12 months for a single person, so I’m prepared for a lengthy process.
The app I envision would help people manage daily stress and anxiety through personalized coping strategies and mood tracking—something inspired by my own struggles with anxiety that I hope could genuinely help others. Creating something that people from all over the world can use to make their lives easier has been on my mind for the past few years. Having mentors to help guide me through this process is exciting.
From my background in graphic design, I understand how complicated programming languages can be and how easily errors creep in. This design experience has given me insight into user interfaces and visual hierarchy, skills I hope will translate well to creating an intuitive app experience. My part-time job and the library are close enough that I can utilize their resources after class before my work shifts. These will be extremely long days for someone who needs a lot of sleep, but the end goal is worth the napless days.
In terms of barriers, my main concern is giving up when I feel too burnt out from trying to absorb and understand everything from the beginning again. My previous major was graphic design when I was fresh out of college, so I have only a small taste of coding—it was foreign to me then and is still foreign to me now. However, I fully believe I have capabilities I didn’t possess when I was fresh out of high school, going into a field I wasn’t truly passionate about at the time.
Losing my full-time job, which felt like my first real career, was devastating. I’m still working to regain the confidence I lost from that experience and the uncertainty that followed. Struggling with anxiety, I tend to appear standoffish to most people. However, it’s refreshing to learn in a patient environment where we can be ourselves without the anxiety that comes from a traditional classroom setting.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to look back at this first post during week 16 after I graduate and see how far I’ve come, from those white Mac computers in middle school to building the apps that might sit in someone’s pocket, ready to solve their daily problems!