The Opportunity of a Lifetime

When I started learning to code, my original goal was just to find a hobby with substance. When I fell in love with it, my goal changed to wanting to build simple apps to create efficiencies for the wealth management firm I worked for. But programming became an addiction. I wanted more.

Roughly six months after beginning to learn to code, I knew I wanted to become a developer. Around that time, I was reading a book called Inside the Yield Book to deepen my understanding of the bond market. In the book, a young MIT grad with a mathematics degree finds his place at a bond trading firm by creating a revolutionary computer model for analyzing bonds. This, however, is not the focus of the book at all. The focus of the book is his findings, not the process of creating the model. I realized after finishing the book that I wanted to be the guy creating the tools for financial advisors, not the one using them. I will spare you the details, but after a long search with a lot of ups and downs, I got a job at a software company as a developer. I'm the lowest of the low when it comes to coders on the totem pole, but I'm on it, and that is all that matters.

On to the important part, what does this mean for coffee break coder? After all, I'm not learning to code solely on my coffee breaks anymore, my job is to code! As I'm sure you've guessed, nothing has changed. I will always be a learner, no matter where I go or where the journey takes me. I'm still using my coffee breaks and free time to learn new coding skills, just like I was before. The blog will still focus on my personal quests and projects, but since my company's app is a Java desktop app, I might write a little more Java code than I otherwise would have.

The journey of the coffee break coder continues 😉

References: Inside The Yield Book