My journey into the world of software development began a long time ago, when I was still a child.
I’ve always wondered how a computer works… how it functions from the inside out. I’ve always wondered how pressing a key on the keyboard makes it appear on the screen. It was always the question: “How?”
After a while, I turned on my computer and started doing some research—you could say that was the beginning of a new chapter in my life; that’s really where it all started.
I opened my browser, went to google.com, and searched for information on how a computer works; I opened a few PDF files and watched YouTube videos that fueled my curiosity even more—as far as I can remember, that was around 2014–2015.
My research sparked my curiosity so much that I wanted to know not only how the hardware works, but also how the software works—I thought it was magic, just like in the beginning.
I did some research and came across Visual Basic (VB), worked through some tutorials, and installed the Visual Studio IDE.
That was the first time I’d ever opened an IDE. The moment I opened it, I felt overwhelmed—like by all the buttons in a cockpit.
I did some more research and decided to develop my own browser with simple features, such as the history feature, a URL bar, and the ability to display the page I was visiting.
I did some research, watched a lot of tutorials, and, of course, put what I’d learned into practice. By the end of the day, the final product was ready.
A simple, functional browser—and I was incredibly happy by the results.
Whilst Visual Basic was my first programming language, there was another one that had sparked my interest early on: Java, mainly because Minecraft was created with it.
What was my next move? It was time to learn Java!
Now things got much more serious: I bought online courses, watched every single lesson, opened my text editor and wrote down what I’d learned, then printed it out and hung it on my bedroom wall—all because I was so hooked.
As we all know, applying what you’ve learned is the essence of learning—so try not to get caught up in “tutorial hell”.
So I put everything I’d learned into practice and, as a child, built my own software using Java, which remains my main language to this day.
That doesn’t mean you should focus on just one thing and forget everything else—no.
Yes, you should master one programming language, since mastering one language takes time, but if you can try to learn other things as well—from a professional standpoint, that also depends on what level you’re at: Are you a junior, mid-level, or senior software engineer?
A software engineer should always have a solid grasp of the fundamentals—without them, it's like building a house without a foundation, which is dangerous.
Looking back, I also recommend trying to solve a problem you’re facing on your own, without help, to understand its root cause. We call this “debugging”—a really important topic that I didn’t pay much attention to as a young person.
However, whenever an error occurred, I tried to understand and fix it myself. But there were also many times where I copied the error and pasted it into Google—you can find great explanations there, too!
Thank you for reading. I hope you found this piece helpful or interesting and gained some valuable information from it.
The next post might be about AI and how it affects us humans.