Old Developer, New Father

I'm Ben. I've been developing for many years now and built or modified in a great number of environments. From inventory management systems written in Excel to full-stack enterprise systems for world-leading companies.

Creating things has always been a passion of mine, but my proudest creation is my daughter. Learning a new programming language has never been much of a challenge, teaching a small human how to function is something I certainly wasn't prepared for. But she taught me a lot more about myself than I've learned in the 30+ years I've spent doing so before! The most recent lesson, self-improvement never ends.

And so here we are, it's time to chronicle my journey from an awkward, nerdy kid who could speak "computer" better than he could speak to another human to an experienced developer giving regular presentations on custom solutions or mentoring teams of individuals of varying skillsets to keep projects on track.

I was always told that I would end up working with computers. For a fair few years after education, I resisted; even to the point that I went to study Forensics at university and got a job in a bio-medical laboratory. But Fate has a way of pulling you in line; I ended up being responsible for the inventory management system for the labs. A hacked together MS Access with a front end thrown together by someone with enough knowledge to be dangerous. It kept falling over and I kept getting pulled from my bench to prop it back up again. Eventually, I accepted the prophecy of every adult from my childhood and started looking for a job as a developer.

I landed my first office job, working for another branch in the medical profession. This time behind a computer rather than lab equipment. I had no formal training and was thrown in the deep end with my own projects. I put together a few smaller systems at first to get used to how code works, how to deploy things, repositories and all the other processes I take for granted now. It wasn't long before I found myself creating a scheduling app for medical samples for the entire county. My first independent greenfield coding, I had to take the time finding out about algorithms and the practical application of them.

I was hooked. I wanted to be a developer.

A few job hops later and I landed with an in-house development team for a world leading company. Even with over a decade of development experience, leading teams and being the "go-to guy" for enough things to keep me in a persistent state of Imposter Syndrome, I still find myself learning every day.

Now, it's time to share my experiences and knowledge. I'll be writing about how I ended up where I am, and include a few guides to help people try things for themselves. Hopefully someone out there will find it useful, maybe even inspiring... Or consider it a warning to not get into development!