I Never Thought I'd Be a Programmer. Yet Here I Am.

Here I am sitting at home on a rainy Saturday, so I thought I'd share my story. It's nothing special, but that's the point. And maybe it could inspire someone else who is worried about changing gears in their life to make that leap. It's never too late to learn something new, to change and to grow.

If you had told me when I was younger that I'd someday be writing code, building software, experimenting with AI models, and going to college for IT, I probably would have laughed at you.

Not because I thought those things were impossible, but because I never imagined myself doing any of them.

Funny how life works out sometimes.

I grew up around computers. I just didn't care that much.

My dad was a programmer.

And not just someone who tinkered with computers as a hobby. He was pretty well known for his work in our area. He'd even been featured in the newspaper for some of the things he'd created. My dad also often created little personalized learning games for me to play when I was very young.

So computers weren't exactly unfamiliar territory in my house.

I had an IBM computer when I was a kid. I knew my way around DOS, and I even made some little text-based games.

This was back when using a computer meant knowing at least a little bit about what you were doing. There weren't pretty interfaces for everything, and you couldn't just click a button and expect things to happen.

I also had friends who ran their own bulletin board systems (BBSs). One of those friends eventually became my husband.

Looking back, it's kind of funny how much technology was around me growing up.

You'd think I would have naturally followed in my dad's footsteps.

Nope.

I was much more interested in animals.

I took a completely different path

I wasn't exactly a model student in high school.

Actually, that's putting it nicely.

I slacked off, stayed back, dropped out at 17, and got my GED.

I wasn't thinking about college or careers in technology. I just wanted to get out into the world and start working.

And that's what I did.

I did attend one year of community college years later, but of course, never finished.

I ended up spending most of my working life with animals, which was something I'd always loved. I was a dog and cat groomer, and a veterinary assistant. I genuinely enjoyed all of that.

Honestly, I still think animals are easier to get along with than people most of the time.

I'm not exactly the world's biggest people person.

I know my dad was disappointed that I didn't pursue programming or something related to computers. And I can understand that now, looking back. He had this whole world of knowledge and experience that he probably would have loved to share with me.

But at the time, I just wasn't interested.

I had my own path, and it went in a completely different direction.

Eventually, I got married, had my kids, and spent a few years as a stay-at-home mom.

Computers were still part of my life, of course, but not in any particularly interesting way.

I usually had a halfway decent laptop. Nothing fancy. Just something I could use for social media, browsing the internet, and playing whatever games it could manage to run.

Programming wasn't even on my radar.

Somehow, I became someone who writes code

Things really took off when I got my first actually good computer.

I don't think there was one specific moment when I decided I wanted to become a programmer.

It happened gradually.

I'd get curious about something, try to figure out how to do it, and then get another idea.

I started experimenting with little scripts and automations. Nothing particularly impressive at first, but every time I figured something out, I wanted to try something else.

One experiment turned into another.

A little script turned into a small project.

And before I knew it, I was starting to learn programming languages, building applications, working with APIs, and spending ridiculous amounts of time figuring out why something wasn't working.

And the strangest part?

I actually loved it.

Not every minute, obviously. There have been plenty of times I've wanted to throw my computer out a window.

But I love making things.

I love having an idea and figuring out how to turn it into something real.

I love learning how software works, even when the process involves hours of confusion, a dozen open browser tabs, and discovering that the problem was something embarrassingly simple.

ChatGPT

I still remember how fascinating it was when ChatGPT first appeared.

Here was this thing that I could actually have a conversation with.

I could ask it questions. I could get it to write things. I could generate random cat pictures. I could even ask it to write little scripts that would automate things on my computer.

At the time, that absolutely blew my mind.

I know that probably sounds funny now, considering how much AI has changed in just a few years.

But back then, it felt like discovering an entirely new world.

And I started getting curious.

Not just about what these tools could do, but about how they worked and what else I could make them do.

AI opened up so many more possibilities. It gave me a starting point when I wanted to learn something new. It made experimenting accessible, and provided me with a constant tutor that was there to answer questions and explain things as often as I needed.

At some point I started experimenting with training and fine-tuning small language models.

I worked with technologies I didn't even know existed a few years ago.

I was excited about learning more.

Going back to school was another surprise

As if discovering a love for programming wasn't unexpected enough, I eventually decided to enroll in college.

For IT.

Me.

If you'd told teenage me that I'd voluntarily go back to school someday, I probably would have thought you'd lost your mind.

But here I am.

I've been attending college online for awhile now, I'm in the honor society, and I've been genuinely enjoying learning new things that I never would have imagined myself studying.

And I'm proud of that.

Not because I think having a degree or being in an honor society makes someone more capable. There are plenty of incredibly talented developers who never went to college.

But because it's something I never believed I'd do.

That's still a little surreal to me.

Maybe we don't have to figure everything out when we're young

I think one of the biggest things I've learned from all of this is that we put way too much pressure on people to figure out what they want to do with their lives when they're young.

I certainly didn't have it figured out.

I didn't take the traditional route into technology. I didn't spend my teenage years dreaming about becoming a software developer. I didn't go straight from high school to college and into a tech career.

I spent years doing something entirely different.

And I don't regret that.

Working with animals was something I genuinely loved, and being home with my kids was an important part of my life.

Those years weren't wasted. They were my life.

And somewhere along the way, I found a new passion that I never saw coming.

Life has a funny way of coming full circle

Sometimes I look at what I’m building now and just laugh.

The girl who grew up with a programmer dad, and couldn't have cared less about his computers, is now spending her days deep in code. When I tell him what I’m up to these days, I honestly don’t think he fully believes it.

But that might be the best part of this whole journey.

You don’t have to have your life mapped out at 17, or 25, or 35. You can pivot hard into something that once seemed completely out of reach.

I still have moments where I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. And yes, I still prefer animals to most people. Some things never change.

But I found a world I love making things in, and honestly, I'm just excited to see what comes next.