Pharmacy2Programming

Hello, World!

Sorry for the lack of post, my social media anxiety still gets to me and puts me off from writing a post about my progression. Nevertheless, here is what I have been up to as of lately.

I started to learn python first through a YouTube tutorial by FreeCodeCamp then moved onto Automate the Boring Stuff (ABS). Ironically, ABS got too boring for me as I have already learned the basics through FreeCodeCamp. The motivation began to decline. I was down but not out.

As a millennial, I began to scour the internet for memes. I stumbled upon Subtle Asian Leftovers (SAL) on Facebook and browsed their page. I stumbled upon Facebook’s mentorship section of SAL’s page. I found a few people who were willing to be mentors and I sent a quick message to numerous mentors with coding experience. Most of them ignored my messages and one bluntly gave me resources. One of the many mentors I have messaged accepted my plea and gave me some guidance. My mentor is a software developer in the west coast of North America who learned to code through a boot camp. No matter how many questions I had, they happily answered them all for me.

My mentor suggested project-based learning and asked me what were my interest and base my projects on them. After out discussion, they said that based on my project ideas, I would be more suited as a front-end developer. they told me that I should learn JavaScript on Udemy (they even found me a sweet deal!).

After a few lessons on JavaScript, I fell in love with the language. For me, it was easy to grasp. So I have embarked on the adventure to learn JavaScript.

Hello, everyone!

First things first, let me introduce myself to the community. My name is Jimmy and a pharmacist based in London, UK. I enrolled into a pharmacy course to satisfy the needs of my Asian parents expectations of their son having a respectable role in today’s society by being a healthcare practitioner. Being a pharmacist is a very rewarding job where I can make an impact on patients’ health and on their quality of life. Don’t get my wrong but being a pharmacist is a sound career. However, I was not passionate about it. My passion always lied within the field of tech; more specifically – developing apps.

Allow me to address the two common questions I was asked about my transition to programming: 1. How did you break it down to your parents, and 2. did you waste your five years of your life to become a pharmacist?

Leading up to the events of breaking the news to my parents, I worked in a very intense pharmacy where I was stretched very thinly to do multiple task (clinical and accuracy checking prescriptions, providing flu vaccinations, answering queries etc.) and assisting my dispensers who were lagging behind. All this built up so much frustration that my artificial flame for pharmacy was slowly being extinguished. My health was slowly deteriorating physically and mentally. I woke up every morning very anxious to go into work – I was in constant fight and flight mode. So how did I break it to my parents? I told them everything – I was unhappy. That I was going to change career to something relating to computer science. To my surprise, they were really supportive. But they told me to find another well paid job (lol).
I have no regrets of enrolling into pharmacy and being a pharmacist. I have learned so much from it as it helped me develop as a person. All the skills I have learned are all transferable. I am able to look after my friends, family, and myself. So was pharmacy a waste of time for me? Absolutely not.

So with introductions out of the way, lets begin with my coding journey. As you can tell from the name of this blog, this will be my personal blog where I like to share my progress with you. I started with #100DaysOfCode on Twitter to record my progress but did not have the energy to post everyday! A bit of a social media introvert I must say. Therefore, a blog was the answer to post my (slow) progress of being a software developer!

My coding and writing skills will hopefully improve and reflect on the quality of this blog, as it’s very bare at the moment!

Jimmy

I was lost but then I was found

First post!