My Story:

The year was 2008 and my brother and I decided to buy the iPhone 3G. At the time very few people had an iPhone
--none that I knew-- and we were instantly the cool crowd. Haha. We loved to play games with each other. One that my brother and I played many times was called Pew Pew Land. Ah, great game. It wasn’t long before we decided that developing apps for the iPhone was something we wanted to do, so we partnered up. Unfortunately neither of us owned a Mac, which was required to develop for iOS, and it wasn’t until a few years later that we were able to get one. At the time my brother was an amateur graphic designer, --something I wasn’t very good at-- so I was to became the programmer. And so began my journey. I began to watch tutorials and read books and resources on the web --I became a master Googler--.
I was young and it took about a year before I began to feel like I was overcoming the learning curve and beginning to understand the things I was trying to force feed my brain.

Not long after that it was time for college. Now you might think I would go to college and get a Bachelor's in Computer Science; That was not the case. To be honest, when I was 18 I had no worldly wisdom and no idea what I wanted to study in college. Programming was just a hobby --one that I was not yet any good at-- and I didn’t even consider it as a career. Someone told me I would like electronics and suggested I try studying that, so that’s what I studied. It turned out they were right. I did like electronics, but I didn't have the same love and passion for electronics that I later discovered I had for programming.

After I found that programming was my real passion and that I had no desire for a career in electronics, I finished my Associate Degree in Electronic Technology rather than continuing school to get my Bachelor's. I had worked my own way through college and had neither the money nor the desire to incur the debt it would take to go back for 3-4 more years. I spent most of college teaching myself anyway, so I figured that’s what I would continue to do.

That was years ago now and the thought of being able to go back and tell my younger self to study Computer Science is nice, but given the chance I'm not sure I would. My struggle and my journey have made me into who I am, and I have learned two things very valuable, that many others have not: the importance of perseverance and the ability to teach myself anything.

It has been said that 10,000 hours of practice will make you an expert at anything. And now, having devoted the time that I did, I believe that to be true. So here's to spending the rest of my life becoming “The World's Greatest Software Developer.”