A Journey In Software Engineering
My name is Micah Banschick and I am a Software Engineer. I have studied, practiced, and proceeded through my programming curriculum. I despaired, rejoiced, and deliberated on many decisions and actions the whole way through. Now I am officially certified as a Software Engineer and now the beginning of my journey has ended. The time has come to row my own boat with the strength of my own skills.
Looking back, I only began this path two years ago. A family friend recommended I try learning how to program. Many people have told me as much before, but I rarely listened. However, thankfully, this time I did. Obviously, once I gave programming a fair shot I liked it.
Soon after a short trial run to see whether I’d be willing to commit to a longer course, I signed up for the Online Software Engineering course at Flatiron School. A few months of Javascript prepared me well, but the next year and a half would go far more in-depth than anything Codeacademy taught. In fact, when I revisited Javascript in the latter half of the course, I picked up even more tricks. However, I do admit that my time in the Javascript modules was some of the easiest materials to learn thanks to the few months I took to prepare.
Suddenly, I was tossed into new languages, frameworks, and packages that completely confounded me. Whether it was Ruby or SQL, or even React, I struggled the entire way through, but still overcame and learned each and every skill. Nowadays, as a Flatiron alum, I am comfortable and familiar with each one of them.
In terms of frontend frameworks, I am fairly accustomed to ReactJS. I soon learned how much more often I used ReactJS simply because of its simplicity. I love it!
In terms of backend frameworks, I know Ruby on Rails well but will likely switch to NodeJS and Express soon. Ruby on Rails is easy to use, but I suspect that I would have a faster workflow if I only needed one language, Javascript for both stacks. Until then, I use Rails for the backend and ReactJS for the frontend.
Nonetheless, I am eager to learn and discover new and better techniques to boost my programming skills all the more. Currently, I am learning React-Native and AWS. React-Native will give me some superficial mobile development skills, and AWS is so robust a platform that I can’t ignore the potential I can gain by using it.
In the future, I plan to create something of my own to be proud of. Perhaps not within the next 5 years or even the decade, but eventually I’ll create something. Until then, I have many many MANY things to learn. I can’t help but be excited to see how I develop. This journey in Software Engineering is one I will look forward to walking.
