People often ask me, how did I become a programmer without formal education?

Well, this is the story.

I learned Python back then just to impress an editor from a popular news agency. He promised me that he would buy me a ticket to a conference if I can use the language. I lied and said I can program Python! The conference was about 3 months away, I was unemployed, with only an old pc as my main machine. It was Athlon X2, and everyone knows it was from 2005.

I thought it was impossible to be proficient in just 3 months without prior knowledge or whatsoever about programming language before. Even tough people said Python is the easiest one to learn, it will be hard journey for me. Especially with an old machine like that. Also, I didn't have any primary source of income and only doing some freelance stuff to barely survive the day. Plus, the money I gained had to be spent into another expensive data to access internet to learn the language.

But, oh God, I was so wrong. Nothing is impossible.

Yes, the journey was hard, and the pressure was big. I had to constantly adding another new concept to my brain every day and night because I never touched that deep into programming before. Yes, I did use Linux in high school, but that was that, never explored any further than "apt-get update" and some basic terminal syntaxes. I had to make sure I can create a big blown portfolio by the end of the 3rd month. The time did not make sense because I also had to search and do freelance job to keep my self alive and avoid getting kicked out of rent. And to my surprise, I can handle all of those, although barely, still I did!

I watched YouTube videos about programming, I read books, I googled everything, every day. One particular book was Think Python 2, which is free. I feel and will always be very thankful to Allen Downey for that book, it taught me from the very basic thing in Python and guided me through the journey. I also have to mention Brad Traversy, because of his collection of free programming course on his YouTube channel, which kick-started my programming journey. No fancy bootcamp, no computer science class. My teacher and my mentor are every tech person on the internet, and now it is including all of my colleagues in current and previous jobs.

I believe human can always do anything as long as they put their mind into it. Especially with the biggest library in the world, the largest collection of human knowledge in a single space, internet. There is an old saying about "when there is a will, there is a way", and that is exactly that. Thus, who don't have the will, would not grow into something bigger, they will stay in the same place for how many times they don't put more effort into it. And the thought that I will be the one who get left behind is a scary one for me.

So that is the story. Oh also, I did not get the ticket to the conference, but instead I got a cool title to put in my resume, and am really grateful of it.