So you’ve stumbled upon this dark corner of the web. You’re looking for a job. Or maybe retirement ideas as a former dev. Or perhaps you’re looking to change your current status. Regardless of choice, I’m afraid I cannot lay your options on paper and make you choose any of those. The best thing I can do is relate my story to you and hope I will shed some light on the darker areas.
At this point you’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘how am I supposed to trust this guy?’. Well, truth be told you can’t so far. In order for me to gain your trust I’m going to lay out my entire story up until this point so you may know my professional background better than my own parents.
In the beginning there was light…and a small 5 year old boy. Times we’re different back then. I know this might sound cliche, or something that your grandma would say, but it’s true. Back then we had a bit of both worlds. Technology was on the rise, every day you would see new games popping up with astonishing graphics (or so we thought) and miraculous gameplay. But we also we’re a more going-out generation, playing football in front of the house and getting hurt on the hard asphalt streets every day. Even so, we we’re growing together with technology, so being a gamer was as natural as a lion hunts a gazelle. I remembered when Santa Claus got me and my sister our first PC. That’s when it all started. That’s when the universe decided that I would eventually start writing this blog. Fast-forward a few years I’m in seventh grade, having 14 years. My cousin is a few years older than me, already studying computer science in high-school. I’m going to him one day and he shows me a text-based RPG game he wrote in Borland Pascal. I remember being completely mesmerised by the thought that you’re able to create something from nothing, just by typing text. And I’m not talking poems or novels, I’m talking something that you can pass on to somebody and they may interact with it. It seemed something so far off from my knowledge base, but you know how kids are, when they set their mind to something they may as well achieve it. That’s when I first met developing. The following couple of years we’re spent learning basics of programming. I learned everything that dropped into my hands. From basic C programming to hackthissite, which was a big thing back then. I had accumulated quite some skills by the time I saw myself into high-school. Obviously I joined a computer science high-school which was to be a breeze for me since I already knew all of the stuff they taught us there. Nevertheless, high-school was quite a disappointment as we didn’t get any programming skills out of that whatsoever. In my mind we we’re just automating math problems. Not once did we develop an actual app, or a game (back then I had always figured I’d end up a game dev). Later on I would find out that high-school was actually great for me because even though no actual dev skills we’re accumulated, we learned how to think code, which is always a great asset to have in your toolbelt. But even though I didn’t enjoy what we we’re being taught in school, even though I was quite the doofus when it came to maths and physics and even though at the Bacalaureat (which is kind of the SAT for Romanians, I guess I forgot to mention my origins) I got higher grades in languages than in computer science, I knew this was the thing for me, so I signed up for the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, the place I imagined would teach me everything I need to know to develop high-quality software. But dreams are made to be shattered…