Fake it till you make it

Day 95 / 366

Let me tell you the story of how I got my first coding gig back in college.

When I was in school, I always wanted to learn computer programming. But my school did not teach it, so I never got the chance. The month before I was about to join college, I started learning a bit of C++ on my own. The best I could do was write a basic calculator program that took in a string like “2 + 2” or “5 * 4” and outputted 4 or 20.

I was naive, and I thought that I was an expert coder now. And when I joined college that is what I boasted to everyone. My illusion was soon shattered when I talked to a few of my classmates who had studied C++ in school. But I was in too deep with the lie now, so I just went with it.

One of my friend's old coaching teachers approached him about a software project. He needed someone who could code to work on it with him. Now since this friend had the perception that I was an expert coder, he reached out to me and I said yes. And I spent the next 24 hours trying to learn HTML, CSS, and PHP so that I don’t look like an idiot when I met his coaching teacher to discuss the project.

As a test, I was given the task of making a basic PHP application with a form submission that gets stored in a MySQL database. I did a horrible job at it, but I guess I showed some promise which is why the guy decided to offer me the gig. I did not get paid for it, but I learned a lot, and that experience helped me get more projects later.

This is why I truly believe in the idea of “Fake it till you make it”.