Since I was a young kid, I have always been heavily into computers and technology. Yet somehow the circumstances of life led me to a career in woodworking throughout most of my 20s. I did try to learn to develop for iOS shortly after the iPad came out, and actually made it through a couple of Stanford courses on iTunes U, before embarking on trying to create my own app. However I had bitten off more than I could chew, and after a couple weeks of working on that app, I got frustrated, and ended up back in the woodshop.
Fast forward to 2019, and now I am married to my beautiful wife, Genna. We are looking to start a family within the next few years, and I’m wondering how well my woodworking salary with no benefits is going to support this venture. That, combined with a woodworking accident that could have easily cut off a finger or worse, caused me to look once again at programming.
So beginning in August I decided to revisit the Stanford iOS course, which had at that point been updated several times in the years since I first went through it, and was now using the Swift language. And I have to say, I loved it! For the next couple months I worked my way through the coursework, and solidified my decision to make this my full time career. Every day, I would wake up early before I started my day in the woodshop and spend time learning and coding. The reason I know that I will succeed this time is that I have a solid, foundational reason motivating me: my wife and future family.
Moving forward
Recently, I decided to apply to a coding bootcamp, and after completing the pre-course work, I received word that I have been accepted and will be starting school early next year! I know that I am driven enough to learn on my own, and there are certainly plenty of materials to continue to do so in the mean time. However, I am looking forward to working with other people, receiving feedback and mentorship, and building a network. I will talk more about my choice in a future post, but I did much research before making this decision, and didn’t take it lightly. It will be a deciding factor in our future, after all.
That brings me up to the present, where I am building this website to share my journey, and simultaneously solidify my understanding of the concepts I am learning. Building this is also causing me to learn some other skills, such as terminal, git, and javascript. I hope that you find some resource in this site, and would love to hear from anyone out there who is also learning Swift, no matter where you are in your journey!