Twelve Years After a Small Step

Twelve years ago today, I took my first small step into the world of software development. A friend who ran a FileMaker Pro consulting company encouraged me to download the trial and give it a try. With no IT or development background, I felt a bit lost initially. However, I decided to start with something familiar: my library of books. I created a simple database to track the books I had read and the ones I wanted to read. I even managed to sort them into a reading list, which helped me plan my next reads.

Less than two months later, my friend took a leap of faith and hired me at his company. It was a significant gamble on his part, but he saw potential in me that I couldn’t see in myself. Over the following years, I immersed myself in the FileMaker platform, collaborating with other developers at the company. It took more than a year before I had the opportunity to run an entire project on my own. Though there were challenges along the way, those experiences taught me invaluable lessons.

A lot of people stepped in to coach me along the way. Co-workers, clients, and friends I made a meet-ups. I could not have made the kind of progress I did without them.

In less than five years, I went from being technologically ignorant to running my own software consulting business. Since then, I have been creating software and websites. While I continue to engage in FileMaker development, I have also expanded my skill set to include WordPress, web apps and plugins with PHP, native apps with C# and Swift. I spend most of my free time on VR development for the web.

It’s changed and morphed a few times, but after all this time I still use that books database to track my reading.