Practice

The actual practice of development is the most concise mess I have ever experienced, and that is what makes it so much fun. I began practicing development like most do, with free sites that teach you how to code. These were fun, but everyone knows you will eventually need more than what these sites can teach you and after making the greatest tribute site to Andes Mints that you have ever seen I headed to school. In school I did the basics over again, but this time with books and more complicated challenges. This time I spent three days a week practicing development, got to use web servers, PHP, MySql, and more Python, HTML, CSS, but surprisingly no Javascript. At this point in my life I had never put as much effort into anything as this was about to lead me into, and I am very glad I got the opportunity to be able to practice this craft every day.

At this point, I was trying to do something software related every day, trying to get into Nashville Software School, and moving to Nashville. My biggest problem at this point is I spent a ton of time in tutorial hell, then I had my NSS interview. During my interview John Wark recommended I look into the book Apprenticeship Patterns by Adele Oshineye and Dave Hoover and this book was a game changer. Instead of thinking about myself as someone trying to learn this vast ocean of material I started thinking of myself as a beginner who needed help to learn. That does not seem to be that common today, since you can learn anything on the internet you can learn anything by yourself, but the problem with that is you can learn anything without focus and that is an area where I really excel. 

Once I began thinking of myself as an apprentice I was really able to focus on finding mentorship that clicked with me. I met so many people who do well in the software development field, some with advice about working with other people and others with more technical advice. The technical advice went well with all the practice I was getting at NSS, home, and now in the office, but the advice on how to work with other people was really game changing. I had always been the type of person to let others who want to do something do it, while I am off doing something else, but that will not make you great at something and at this point I learned to take what I wanted to do and do it. I had every bit the skills of my friends and coworkers, but was giving away the work that I wanted to do and this was every bit the hardest challenges I have faced in my career and getting passed it would be an excellent challenge in finding out what I wanted and what I wanted to do.