I’ve always been a “tech” kind of person. I could always speed up the computer, fix the TV, and find out why the phone wasn’t working. I began what I called coding at the age of 9. I began an account on Scratch and started stringing together blocks to build my first (terribly put together) programs. I slowly matured into more complex programs over the years, and at 12 started teaching myself code.

HTML was a perfect starting point. I thought that everything was going to be visual and simple, just like Scratch. However, when I went to the W3Schools website (the link that showed up in my Google search), I quickly learned that I was wrong. HTML wasn’t a bit like Scratch. However, I headed to school the next day and began writing a basic webpage on a sheet of rumpled notebook paper. I came home that day and my dad noticed the paper hanging from my hand. “What’s that?” I showed it to him and he looked at me like I was crazy. “You wrote a website with HTML?” I nodded and asked to use Notepad to test it.

He took the paper from me and typed the syntax down. We exported the file as .html and ran it in Chrome- and there it was, in all its serifed h1 glory. From then on, I shot off. By my 13th birthday I had taught myself HTML, CSS, a bit of Python, and a dab of JavaScript. I thought I was the smartest person in the world when all of the sudden I realized that I hadn’t actually learned 1 full object-oriented language. So for the first time, I navigated to Codecademy to learn Python. My dad encouraged me to pick the language because of the universal applications and the popularity. I learned slowly, and steadily until I stopped. I got stuck, and I couldn’t get past a lesson. So I moved backwards, assuming I wasn’t yet good enough for an object-oriented language. I returned to Scratch under a new username and kept programming, as well as gaining some skills in graphic and UI/UX design.

I love Ruby so, so much. It’s just simple, practical, and easy to understand. I bounced back from my Python failures, completed the Codecademy course for Ruby and began writing a full calculator (which you can see at https://github.com/micahlt/textcalc-). Now, at the age of 15 with the confidence of knowing 3 languages, I’m back on Python and am in the Coding I course at my high school. I’ll learn C++ and improve my knowledge of Python.

Because from here on, there’s nowhere to go but forward. 👨‍💻