Sorry for the overly dramatic headline. Things are not that bad. What I’m discussing is the frantic pace of the computer programming and information technology industry.
I started learning to code December 2017. At the time, I was asked to assist in updating a spreadsheet template for our company. The major features were written in Visual Basic for Applications aka VBA.
I was familiar with Microsoft Excel but knew nothing of VBA. My colleague assisted me in learning VBA. By the end of the project, I found myself interested in computer programming again. The last time I was interested in programming was during middle school. I stopped messing with coding back then because I could not afford to buy a computer.
At work, I use Microsoft Excel extensively for everything. Outside of work, I use Google Sheets. This lead me to start to wonder if I could do some of the tasks done in Excel via VBA using Google Sheets. This is when I discovered Google Apps Script.
As it turns out, Google Apps Script is JavaScript for Google applications similar to VBA for Microsoft applications.
I quickly found the syntax more to my liking. I wanted to learn more and ended up studying JavaScript itself… The language of the web. Despite its many quirks, I really enjoyed studying JavaScript. I lost interest in VBA because I found its syntax “dirty” compared to JavaScript.
I was overwhelmed to learn that JavaScript and web developers use a bunch of frameworks such as React, Angular, etc. The JavaScript world became an overwhelming and intimidating place where I started to feel as though I could never become an expert because there simply are too many plug-ins, frameworks, etc.
Since JavaScript uses syntax based on the C language family I became curious about its often-confused-with-though-unrelated cousin, Java.
My new manager at work went out to buy me books to help with VBA and Java! The company was looking into adopting the Java language for in-house application development. Unfortunately he bought me a book for advanced Java developers.
I remained focused on JavaScript and eventually stopped learning VBA. I started to study Java alongside JavaScript.
Somehow I stumbled upon yet another computer programming language called Kotlin. Kotlin was recently selected by Google to be an official language for developing Android applications.
I looked into this new language because I heard a lot of positive buzz surrounding it. I was amazed to see how “beautiful” the code looked. The syntax is concise and clear. It is a JVM language but devoid of the boilerplate code which is common in Java.
I am currently learning React and GitHub. React is the most popular JavaScript framework. There is also React Native which is used to write programs to run on both Android and iOS. I recently purchased a book which covers both React and React Native.
GitHub is a source control platform used by developers around the world. It is very convenient to have your code hosted in the cloud and available to download to any computer you like. It is also great for open source collaboration.
I recently purchased a new Chromebook which has a Linux container! Linux is very popular in the developer community. I knew nothing about Linux until I bought this laptop. I now do all of my coding on the Chromebook via Linux. I can sync with GitHub and then pick up where I left off on one of my desktop PCs which run Windows. I may convert one of my old PCs to Linux.
The fabulous world of computer programming… it is fast-pace, ever-changing, and interesting. One simply cannot get bored in this field, though at times it can feel overwhelming.