“It Takes A Village to Raise a Programmer” – I just made that up for this post.
So yes I did fabricate this quote for my own purposes. But it seems to fit my situation well, as I truly have been the benefactor of tremendous support and efforts of many. And as those of us in the US settle into our annual time of thanks, I feel incredibly grateful to everyone who has shown me support.
Heading down this path to learn to program required a strong leap of faith, and I don’t regret it for one second. That’s not to say it’s been all positive; in between learning and building, there have been times of stress and frustration.
But the support of everyone from family to complete strangers has been overwhelming. It’s great to know there are people pulling for my success.
Tweet of Support
I’ve placed the following tweet on this site from the beginning. An amazing number of people, many strangers, have sent this tweet out to support me.
“I support @andrewkkirk on his journey to go from total noob to programmer in 18 weeks.” < Tweet This Message >
I send a big thank you to all of you that have taken time to support in one way or another. Theses gestures mean more to me than you could imagine.
The Importance of Sharing
Once I made the commitment to learning to program fulltime, I knew it would also be important to write throughout my entire process. My hope is that others will benefit through documenting my experiences, and even avoid certain pitfalls by avoiding my mistakes.
An additional result, which I didn’t anticipate, is that I’ve reconnected with people who find out about my project from social media. For example, I recently received this note from a high school soccer coach I hadn’t spoke to in several years.
Isn’t the internet incredible? Of course, if I hadn’t written about my process and widely shared it, I wouldn’t have had this benefit.
“On-Call” Support Team
Finally, I’ve add several people take time out of their busy schedules to support me by meeting up to pair program with me, discussing code on skype, and answering questions when I inevitably break something. These folks have gone above and beyond, all in the name of helping a fellow developer.
Remember to be thankful not just for those family and friends close to you, but also to those people that make a subtle impact on us. Without their support, I wouldn’t have made it this far. Thank You!