# My path to coding

## Before I was a developer

I was raised in a family of women - my mother, my grandmother, and me.
I was encouraged to love literature, to love social sciences.
But I had no one to encourage me to love science.
I asked my mother a math question when I was about 10 and she ran out of my room saying: *I don't know anything about math, don't ask me.*
And this is my first memory related to math! So it's no wonder I had problems in school with math, physics, etc.

There was no question of what to study - social studies.
And what more social there is than social work. But it didn't fit me.
It took me 1 year to figure out that social work is not for me, but it took me many more to figure out what is.
Just when I graduated I figured out that **I love to learn new things**.
I can still hear myself say to someone:

> I'm interested in everything in the world, except two things. For the love of God, I can't remember what the other thing was, but the first one was **programming**.

After graduation I spent a few years behind the camera, filming events.
The camera work was fine, but I didn't progress with editing.
Someone suggested that it would be good for me if I'd understand computer programs better -
via programming.

***Enters Python.***

## Second love of my life.

Here I have to sing praises to **my first instructor dr.Chuck** (Charles Severance).
His amazing course is available at [https://www.py4e.com/](https://www.py4e.com/) and at the end of the first course, he gives you a diploma -that's when he got me hooked.

Just before I started with that course - I asked my programming friend if he thinks beginning with Python is a good idea, his answer was -

> Python is a God

After that, I dedicated my scarce spare time to learning -**Python, Holy Trinity of Front End (HTML, CSS, JS), React**.
It was hard not to lose focus - I still had to have a job to support myself and I got pregnant with my first baby girl during that time.

**But I kept pursuing that dream.**

Although my sweet baby didn't sleep for a year, I studied in the evenings and got myself to the point where I could say -

> I learned to code

I created a few webpages for friends. This is something I highly recommend to everyone - you get to learn a lot, without the pressure of a paid job.
The project I am still proudest of was an internal project for a company that analyses car's worth. It was in Django and included combining .xls documents. **After a few years, that firm is still using my program!**

I started looking for a coding job after that, with my hopes held high, that I'll be a Pythonista.
No one wanted to take a chance on a rookie without computer-oriented education in the backend, but I was lucky and persistent enough to get a front-end job.
I was (and still am) so proud of my achievement, but recently I feel like I'm outgrowing that job.

Starting a blog is my first step toward being a full-grown programmer, who can make her own decision about her stack and projects she choose.

## Tech jobs are harder for some

#### My FE job was harder because I am a woman. When I started, I wasn't the only woman in my job, but after a while, almost all of them left.
Our boss didn't take us seriously enough and male coworkers had a lot of jokes that gave us an uncomfortable feeling.
It's tough for a woman to succeed in the male-dominated world, that's why **I wish to encourage females to learn to program and to get jobs in the tech field.**

#### My FE job was also harder because I didn't have a diploma from the tech field. 
My boss was faster to listen to someone with a degree than me. I had to prove myself constantly. I entered the company with an agreement, that I'll start as FE but transfer to BE when the position opened. A lot of time and opened BE positions have passed since then and I asked many times, but the situation remains unchanged. 

**I created this blog because I want to encourage people that weren't lucky enough to study programming, to code. To learn to be great developers and to get a job in the tech field, no matter their background.**