Starting in IT
I started in IT at a local school in my small town in December 2024. It was my first job out of college after earning my B.S. in Cybersecurity.
None of the infrastructure was updated. Everything was failing, and luckily, I had one other IT person there: my director. I honestly think he knew less than I did, and he would get frustrated at almost every ticket.
Even then, I knew I wanted a role where I could code.
Fast forward to more recently, he had a freak out and quit. Now we have a two-person team, and everything is finally up to date and functioning. Even with things improving, I still knew I wanted to move toward a SWE-type role.
Learning to Code
I first decided to learn C# for Unity. I was really into game dev while I was in college, so it felt like a natural place to start.
I began with the Microsoft/freeCodeCamp C# certification, and I surprisingly really enjoyed it. I made a few small games on itch.io that no one cared about, but I had fun building them.
After that, I went on a bit of a language-hopping spree. I jumped from C# to C++, then into full-stack web development. I actually stuck with web dev for a while and really enjoyed it. But this cycle went on for awhile of just constant swapping.
Wannabe Founder
Then something switched overnight.
I went from writing maybe 0-5% AI-generated code to using AI for nearly everything. I started spam-building startup ideas that did not really go anywhere. I may have made around $2-3k from them, but most of the time I was just chasing money and building whatever I thought had the quickest path to making some.
I got seriously addicted to vibe coding. I tried Codex, Cursor, Claude, and basically anything with AI in it. I did like Codex the most, though.
Eventually, I realized I had almost completely stopped coding by hand. I was not passionate about the startup ideas I was building. I loved coding, and I knew I had to step back.
Back to Coding
Now I am back to coding without AI assistance.
I will eventually mix what I know with AI, but while I am learning, I would rather stay away from it and build the fundamentals myself.
I chose Go as the language I want to stick with. I am currently reading Learn Go with Tests, and so far I am really enjoying it.
If you are an experienced Go developer, currently learning Go, or even just thinking about learning it, please connect with me. I would love to chat more about Go or development in general!