this.is_a?

Hello and welcome, this is my first post and if you’re reading this I can only assume you’re lost.

Perhaps I can help you find what you were looking for:

You found this blog on the Internet. I don’t know if you got the memo, but the internet is pretty much only used for googling funny pictures of cats. Go on, it’s fine – I understand the confusion and won’t be offended. Enjoy lolling forever.

If you’re still reading then I suppose I may as well give you the, the down low, if you will, on what be gwan on this blog. Who am I? What brings me here? And what, pray tell, is this here blog to become? Well, get ready, because here it comes.

I can’t believe you made it this far. You’re probably my most loyal reader and I should probably arrange some sort of prize for you. But I have no money and rather than turning to a life of crime I’ve opted for a career change into something altogether more exciting. Maybe when I make it big I’ll buy you all the things you deserve, maybe I won’t. Probably the latter but roll the dice, why not?

Talk is cheap, but its all I have for you right now. My name is Jack, I’m 25 and so far life has not worked out exactly as planned. Perhaps the lack of plan is to blame, perhaps not, the technicalities are not important. What is important is that after achieving a decent degree at a decent university I have not found myself the decent job to complete the set. I tried a few things, allowed myself to be exploited in a few no-hope internships and wound up in management in hospitality. It was alright, but I missed using my head. To be honest the unsocial hours really started to bite and getting into a new relationship pretty much sealed the deal – I wanted to live in the same time as everyone else, too often have I said “No.” to friends’ birthday parties and lost touch with people I considered important.

I want to go to birthday parties.

My original plan had been going into the tech industry, programming, development, that kinda thing. However I ended up doing something completely different at University and while that was a wonderful experience and I wouldn't change it, I had thought the door to a career like this was forever closed unless I were to acquire the key in the form of another undergraduate degree. No thanks. Then I heard about coding bootcamps.

There are more than a few initiatives trying to get young people into coding, it seems there are more jobs than coders out there. I’d had the idea in the back of my mind for a long time, but like I said, I didn’t think I had the key. I don’t remember exactly where I found out about bootcamps but im certainly glad I did!

In the nutshell it’s a short-term intensive course to get you from “derrrr” to Coder and ready for employment as a Junior Software/Web Developer. That’ll do me just fine. It isn't cheap, but I believe it will be worth it.

This blog will serve as a diary of my musings running up to, during and probably after this course.

You can expect more top-drawer posts such as this one with ramblings about code that I probably don’t really understand just yet. I’ll be posting examples of my handiwork to prove how crude and ugly my code is. Looking back on these will be a real treat.

Hopefully my journey will be worth following, even if its not I imagine it will still be cathartic for me to map it. But if you’d rather look at pictures of cats, I get it. Sometimes I’d rather do that too.