“Why did I decide to study Software Engineering?”
Aloha my name is Ross Enriques, and I’m currently 28 years old and this is my journey to learning Software Engineering. I am currently residing in Las Vegas with my wife and 2 kids. I am originally from Hawaii where I was brought up and graduated high school in 2010. During my high school year I was majoring into Culinary Arts which is a much different field than Software Engineering. Although I did have a computer class which caught my interest into the world of technology. I decided to go to college to for Culinary Arts.
From 18 till 22 years old I was working many jobs as a chef and decided that the lifestyle wasn’t for me. It was strenuous and the physical labor was getting the best of me. I had my first kid at 21 years old and I wanted to be there for my son as he grew up so I worked a 9–5 job where I was off weekends. I realized I was stuck in the same loop and I knew I had to break free not only for my family but for myself.
Me and my little family made the move to Las Vegas when I was 24 years old and being out here my eyes opened. With all the financial opportunities that surrounded me being up here I decided to learn a trade into finished carpentry. It was through this line of work where is where my journey into Software Engineering all started.
I was blessed to meet a client who was very successful and we ended up talking a bit and he told me he was a software developer. I then learned that he was self-taught and he persevered to change his life around. This is where he told me I could do it too and that the opportunity is there. But it wasn’t the flashy things that got to me to want to learn software engineering it was the fact that he was a high school drop out who changed his life around. He is the prime example that if you put your mind to something you can succeed.
He would later invite me into a group of other people like me that he knew who was interested into coding. In this group we were given links to learn how to code. I was intrigued by a site called solo learn and this is where I learned my first things about coding. I knew I had to forget everything I thought I knew and be willing to learn from scratch. So I started off with HTML and moved my way up to CSS. It was like entering the matrix and suddenly everything started to click and make sense. I realized that I really enjoyed learning this and I wanted to take this seriously. I attempted to learn a couple languages on my own and to be honest it was a little tricky.
Which brought me up to the decision to join a school or boot camp. I knew they existed so I looked into a few different schools. My search was narrowed down between Flatiron or Lambda. I ended up choosing Flatiron which I will continue to persevere and be ready for what’s in store for my future.
I know being a Software Developer will bring me financial freedom but I know it is forever changing and I am willing to keep up with it. I grew up in the generation where technology just started to blow up. In my childhood I grew up seeing everything evolve from video game systems, to computers and cell phones. The continued everyday dependency of social media is such a big thing. I remember when I had an asian avenue or xanga and in order to edit your profile you actually had to write code to change things. I didn't realize how much coding was constantly surrounding me. I know that this is where I want to be so I can be apart of the future. As everything is switching to computing I like the idea that I will be able to understand that there is more than meets the eye.
