The race is not for the swift, but for those who can endure.
Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
Don’t worry, that’s probably the only bible verse I’ll be quoting in this post since I’m not a very religious person, but for the past 8 years, this job that I chose to do has had me questioning my existence. It’s also been pretty fun, so why am I considering quitting? 🥲
In the beginning
…and the word was “hello world” 🌎
I began coding in high school when I was forced by my I.T. teacher, Mrs. Sobers, to choose I.T. over Home Economics. At the ripe age of 15, I wrote my first “Hello World!” program in good ol’ Pascal with her guidance. This was it; I’m ready to hack NASA!
Most of my early programming years were spent doing homework and assignments in Pascal until I started teaching myself C and CPP and experimented with hacking on the Dell Inspiron 15 my uncle bought me. This was my very first computer. Before then, I’d write all my programs using pen and paper as pseudocode or sometimes actual code. Whenever I got the chance to visit the library or internet cafe, I’d hack it out in my IDE of choice… Codeblocks.
I remember my first time opening devs tools and changing the colour of Facebook. I was using a new browser that I installed at the internet cafe, which allowed me to make style changes to any website, and it would persist even after a hard refresh. Man, I thought I hacked Facebook. Young Carl was dumb. It didn’t take long for me to realize this wasn’t the case, and I wasn’t gonna get an email from Anonymous requesting I join their group.
Nevertheless, I was excited. I was like an infant discovering the world for the first time, soaking in as much as possible. I learned how the internet works and did some socket programming in CPP; I built a remote access tool and keylogger in Python and a trojan with C that disguised itself as the Avast Antivirus but slowly deleted all your system files and eventually made its way to your boot loader. Crazy how easy it was to spread that around the school. Luckily for NASA, I didn’t continue down this dark path.
My first job as a programmer
I joined the industry in 2017 at a young startup, 5 years after graduating high school. I had to make sure that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, so I worked in customer service for a bit and did a couple years of trade school and 2 years of college. Only one of those years was formally spent doing Computer Science; I was bored and needed more discipline. They were teaching if statements, and I was doing Quicksort in my sleep.
The startup at the time had a 3 man dev team focused on building solutions for the web. They were small but mighty. Here, I deepened my understanding of how the web works and learned a lot of what I know today about web development.
At some point, I began writing less code and working with WordPress. It was a necessary evil, but rather than complain about it, I became an expert in WordPress. I learned how to build plugins and themes, use it as a headless CMS, and SEO and security best practices. I knew it all and became HIM despite it not being fun. I did what I had to do for the team and business. It was grunt work. I was bored but disciplined.
Why I’m thinking about quitting
Short answer: it may be time.
It’s been 4 years since I left the startup, and I’ve since become a director of a non-profit and started my own company, which has taken on a life of its own. It’s becoming increasingly complex for me to code daily and guide the general direction.
This is a challenge I knew I’d face when I decided to start a business, and the answer may seem straightforward, either:
- Scale up my company’s dev team so I can focus on the bigger picture or
- Hire someone with experience who shares my vision to steer the ship forward so I can continue to code.
I’ll have to decide on a direction within the next year, but for now, I’ll enjoy my time building cool stuff. Two weeks ago, I switched to Neovim as my primary editor and started learning to write an interpreter in Golang.
2024 will be an exciting year for my business and personal growth, so while I can still have my cake and eat it, I will enjoy it.