Hi, there! I'm Márcio, a 38-year-old graduated technical translator and proofreader from Brazil. I've been working in this industry for the past 11 years, and despite liking what I do for living, a few years ago I started getting tired of the place I was in relation to my career. I was seeing some of my colleagues switching to other fields of study, while others were getting specialization in co-related areas.

Truth is, they were all kind of figuring out their place in the market, but as for me I was worried I couldn't find mine, and I wasn't feeling that same spark of excitement when I first started my translator career. That's when I decided to study to become a developer.

That was March 2019.

Then Pandemics hit us and the world changed dramatically.

Suddenly, many started struggling to make their living. Some lost their jobs. Some lost their lives.

I know... my story is not different from many other aspiring-to-be dev stories around the world. This idea of trying to survive physically, financially, and emotionally despite the COVID-19 outbreak, locked in our own homes, and yet somehow manage to dedicate some time daily to pursue the professional goal of learning new skills or landing a new job.

Although we can assume there are a few ones that experienced a financial and professional boost during this period, I'd take a risk to say that majority of these learners had to look for other driving forces, a new motivation, something that would remind them every morning to keep fighting against the waves, to resume their courses and projects, as trying to learn coding and programming alone by yourself can be a challenging experience.

So what motivates me in my personal goal of landing a job as a dev?

Well... personally, my motivation came from Twitter. To be more specific, by joining the #100DaysOfCode hashtag. Not going to lie: I was skeptical at first. As a student that comes from Languages and Human Science, I had a biased view of the Tech community as a whole, and God knows how much I was wrong.

Surprisingly, after the first few days I started making some connections and getting to know more people going through the same steps as me: an over 35 year-old student coming from a non-tech background. Particularly, what helped me was that I've always been curious to read people's concerns and stories, and many times I could relate to their journeys. I knew that by knowing their aspirations and motivations, I could shape and adjust my own.

It turned out that the dev community, in this matter, is extremely welcoming and helpful: many experienced developers and tech influencers join in #100DaysOfCode and other tech hashtags and threads to cheer beginners and motivate them to keep pushing their learning and professional goals forward, some by saying, for example,

“Yeah, it’s totally possible, but it’s gonna be hard.”

And this particular reply hits me hard every single time I come across it, but in a good way. It reminds me that most of us are in the same boat. That that new trending library or framework we dedicated so much time to learn last week was just a tip of the iceberg, but yet another small achievement unlocked successfully. That even if you are no longer in your early twenties, there are middle-aged people out there learning new skills, trying to shift their career paths, and some even landing their first-time dev jobs during this pandemics.

But most importantly, there are tech advocates and seniors developers willing to share their time, experiences, tips, perspectives, successful stories and assist and guide beginners in their learning path.

Personal Conclusions

To sum it up, by feeling welcome in such a way definitely made my learning experience more enjoyable, and I appreciate a lot all this support from the Twitter tech community. It's funny how I had a completely different idea of them, to the point of seeing it as an impenetrable barrier, that as a Language graduate, I would struggle to fit in. Today they are by far the group I most interact with. Lesson learned, as the saying goes.

Regardless which social media, websites or apps you commonly use, If you are learning coding, I think is a fabulous idea to be part of a tech community where you feel comfortable at. Do not underestimate how much you can learn and absorb from people's stories and experiences.

Since this is my first post, I wanted to give a little introduction about me rather than talk about programming. For the next post onwards, I will be focusing on Data Science, Data Visualization and Machine Learning, my favorite subjects. So expect to see a lot of Pandas and Numpy tips here, as I step each day into this thrilling new territory for me.

I'm excited and looking forward to reading your stories here on Hashnode too!

But what about you, what is your driving force in your developer journey?