It all started with a bit of curiosity...

You see I have always been a child intrigued by all sorts of technology. I used to disassemble different gadgets around the house just because I was curious about their internals. Often than not though, I wouldn't be able to put it back together.

In 2011, my curiosity transferred to the digital side with my first laptop, it was an HP Pavilion, that's all I remember. I got into making football shoe mods for PES 2011 using Windows Paint, yes I did literally edit it pixel by pixel...

Chapter 1: “How are websites made?”

In 2014, I was browsing the internet on a random late night when suddenly the question behind the process of making websites arose in my mind. I googled “How are websites made?” and it led me to HTML and CSS.

I started playing around with these two, learned them a bit and it really grasped my interest, from that point on I would be doing web dev.

Chapter 2: JavaScript is so hard

With my progress in HTML and CSS, I started needing to use JavaScript in my projects to sprinkle some interactivity. I played around with JS and jQuery, but it would take me a while to really unlock the “thinking in javascript” phase of my life. With that though, I was able to expand the scope of my projects and eventually started learning React.

Chapter 3: JavaScript is cool

Now that I was learning and using React, it unlocked a lot of new opportunities for me, I was doing a lot projects on codepen to refine my CSS and React skills and since then I truly felt like a web developer. I had more confidence in my skills from then on and I would then go on Github from then on.

Chapter 4: It's university time

After finishing high school, I decided to pursue a BSc Computer Science degree in the UK. By that point I was certain that I want to do web dev for a career and so it was the right decision for me. I would further refine my skills in web development during my time at university with me landing a part time internship at Decipad.

Chapter 5: Open source

After my internship, I got a taste of working in a team, and I wasn't going to let that slip away. I started looking at contributing to open source. I was watching Jack Herrington's video on tRPC and it was so cool to me, I went on tRPC's website to be a bit disappointed in the landing page and the docs, and so that would be where I would contribute.

Final chapter: The tRPC butterfly effect

With me working on a new design and website for tRPC, I managed to make connections with really cool people such as Alex in the web dev community. I got invited to speak at an LNUG meetup in London about tRPC.

That meetup would soon become a crucial part of me getting my first full time job after university, as that I would meet my current boss at the meetup.

So basically, Jack Herrington uploading that video led to a person on the other side landing their first web dev job.

To be continued...