How I Became a Full-Stack Developer

Automating the Boring Stuff

Thinking back, I’ve always been drawn to automating the boring stuff. Long before I ever considered becoming a developer, I found myself looking for ways to make repetitive tasks faster, cleaner, and less painful.

One moment stands out clearly. At the university, where I studied mechanical engineering, we were given a technical iteration assignment — for non-engineers, that basically means doing the same set of calculations over and over until the final value lands within a very narrow acceptable range.

Instead of grinding through endless recalculations like everyone else, I built an Excel sheet with custom formulas that handled the entire process automatically. What normally took students hours or even days suddenly took me about an hour.

I probably don’t need to mention how popular I became after that — or how much extra money I made helping my classmates finish the same assignment. Let’s just say automation paid off in more ways than one.

Looking back now, that was probably my first real experience of thinking like a developer — spotting repetition, reducing error, and building a simple system instead of doing manual work.

A Long Detour

For the next fifteen years, I didn’t think about a programming career. My professional journey took me across several different fields. That decade and a half was full of adventures, changes, and life happening. But let’s fast-forward to 2018, when I had already been living in the UK for three years and, after holding various positions, had just started working as a production supervisor.

It didn’t take long to realise just how painfully inefficient everything was. Procedures, documentation, daily processes — all of it was extremely paper-heavy and error-prone. Excel was everywhere, but used in a way that made work harder instead of easier.

It felt like we weren’t using computers to support our work — we were working for the computer.

Hitting the Limits of Excel

I started creating Excel macros to make my own job easier, and for a while, that helped. But very quickly I reached the limits of what spreadsheets could realistically do. I needed something more flexible, more reliable, and more professional.

That was the point where I started looking for better tools — not just to save time, but to reduce errors and make processes more robust.

Learning to Code — For Real

During my search, I quickly realized there was no ready-to-use tool. The only real solution was programming — so I dived into it. What I learned was mostly self-taught; however, to deepen my knowledge, I searched for training opportunities and came across a company called Programming & Career. They offered a one-year frontend web developer training programme, and it immediately felt like the right choice. I enrolled, committed fully, and successfully completed the programme. That year became one of the most intense learning periods of my life.

I learned the fundamentals of Python, Django, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, SQL, Git, GitHub, React, and a bit of Node.js with Express.

Somewhere along the way, something clicked. Programming didn’t just make sense — it felt right.

When It Became Obvious

As my understanding grew, so did my ideas. Suddenly, I couldn’t stop thinking about all the applications I could build to make everyday work easier.

Another fantastic thing was that, unlike many other professions, making mistakes didn’t hurt anyone physically or financially. If I broke something, I could simply delete the code and try again. I did this several times, and failing and trying again was an excellent way to learn how to code.

As I started building more and more complex applications, I realized that frontend development alone wasn’t enough — everything eventually needs a backend. So I searched for another training program and enrolled in, and completed, a one-year full-stack development program at IT Career Switch, where I gained in-depth experience with both front-end and back-end technologies, including React, Redux, Bootstrap, PHP, Python, Node.js, REST API, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Git & GitHub, Jest, Mocha, and jQuery.

All In

After all this, there was no doubt left. This wasn’t just a hobby; it was a career change — a direction that finally felt right.

This is where Part 1 ends. I’ll share Part 2 soon, where things will start getting very real.