When I was 13 years old, I had a Pentium II computer which could run games like GTA 1 or 2 and I would play them a lot.
I was always fascinated by how these computers worked. In my eye, they had infinite potential. One could derive unlimited enjoyment out of Paint that came standard with Windows.
There was so much hidden in all of this software that made me curious.
How does a program do what it does?
What happens when we click on the close button; how does it know?
These questions may seem easy now, but considering that computers were a magic box for most of us in the beginning, these seem pretty normal.
This is how I discovered the world of programming and later became a Software Developer.
From Consumer to Creator
It wasn't until I started playing flash games in the browser that my fascination turned into curiosity. I started playing games on websites like Armor Games & Kongregate.
At that time browser games and animations were built using a programming language called ActionScript.
When I searched a little bit about it, I quickly found full tutorials on how to build games with it right on Kongregate and I started delving into it.
I built flash games with ActionScript and later learned ActionScript 3.0 which was a Object-Oriented programming language. Sadly, the support for Flash in browser ended soon after with the advent of HTML5.
Though I enjoyed it a lot and wanted to do more. So, I searched for something else. Back in the day there was no Unity yet, so I learned XNA which was a C# framework for making 2D games.
I would go on to try many different languages like LUA (LOVE framework), Unity (C#), and Phaser (JavaScript).
Just to be clear, I don't think that at this time I wanted to become a developer of any kind. I was just looking to fulfill my desire to build something of my own.
There was just so much that one could do with programming, things I thought that were only limited to professionals, I could do in my free time.
The whole world was at my fingertips! If my 56K internet and Pentium II computer allowed.
Automating the Boring Stuff
Since I had a really slow computer at that time, I wanted to do something so that when my PC starts all my applications don't load ...but I still didn't want to open them one by one manually.
That is when I discovered Python. I could control the applications on my PC through it based on CPU usage.
So, I did exactly that and built a simple application that would measure the CPU usage and only load the applications on startup after the CPU becomes idle.
Life Finds a Way
Back in 2015, my brother came to me with the problem that their university internet would not allow torrent downloads even for legal torrents.
Though there was a workaround to it, you could upload the torrent on a service called Filestream and it would give you a direct download link.
Though, going and uploading the torrent to it was still too cumbersome. So, I delved into web automation through Selenium and created a script that would detect torrents in a folder, sign in on the website, upload it there and then start the direct download.
Discovering this kind of automation made things too easy, I would go on to scrape a lot of websites with this method and even bypass mundane tasks.
A cut-down version of the script is still hosted on my GitHub
Fin
And be one traveler, long I stood
In the end, these events and tendencies in life naturally nudged me towards becoming a developer.
The simple act of discovering computers and solving problems.
I believe these are the things that should be at the core beliefs of any developer. A constant desire to solve problems and convert them into actionable items.
That's the core belief of being a software developer.
How did you get into software development?
Was it by accident or design?