When I was younger, I taught myself how to program in Visual Basic 3.0. I had tried to learn, but I just wasn't getting it. I would open it up and just stare at the screen for hours, clicking and messing around with everything. One night, I went to sleep, had a dream about the code, woke up, hopped on the computer, and wrote my first program. Sure, it was a program like a random 8-ball generator. You asked it a question and you got an answer, but it was the start of something.
Anyways, when I turned about 19 years old, I lost interest completely and left the programming world. I became interested in psychology and studying people and that is what I went to school for and loved it, hoping to help people understand their purpose and life, find meaning in life, and make money doing it.
After I graduated, I went to English in another country for a year, and after my visa was up, I returned home, broke, just having barely been able to pay for my overweight bag. I remember feeling bad when my brother asked me to go to a movie and I couldn't even afford the $9 it cost to see.
Anyways, I applied for jobs across the board on Craigslist, many jobs that required a psych degree but not a single one replied. I decided I would go into an area where I knew I could do it, but I didn't really have much confidence, though I would try anyway: programming.
I ended up getting a job fixing bugs and enhancing autobody shop software for a tyrant who took advantage of my inexperience, paid me a salary that I really couldn't live on (I moved back home for a while) and I put up with it for about a year and a half, before acquiring all the knowledge and confidence I needed to apply for other jobs. I will say that while I may not have gone to school for programming, I was certainly happy to learn what I did -- and programmers use psychology everyday in UI/UX design.
I was also freelancing on the side and applied to several web developer jobs, having gained real interest in that field. It took a few tries, but two companies called me back, and luckily, one required I worked during the day, while the other required I worked at home at night. It worked out great and allowed me to pay off my student loans.
You can read more about my experience with that job here: http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com/the-opportunity/
From my love of psychology, I created http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com to still go after my dream of helping people discover their purpose -- though I found a less formal way to do it, and although I make money from the ads, I certainly could never quit my day job.
There is something about programming though that I never thought I would love, wanting nothing to do with computers ever again when I left programming, but realizing that it was just something in my blood. I love being creative and I love working on user interfaces, making software or design more user-friendly. I love troubleshooting and tinkering and figuring out why it works or why it doesn't work.
I am always learning, always thinking of something new, always freelancing, and always working on side projects. I ended up creating https://mypost.io which is a content creation platform that allows anyone to have a webpage up on the Internet in seconds -- no registration or email account required. This project taught me a lot about how PHP and databases work. Before MyPost, I knew nothing about databases, but by the time I was finished, I completely understood how information and databases worked. The more rewarding experience from MyPost is the fact that even without any advertising at all, it is used by people around the world.
MyPost also taught me the great importance of UI and UX. I used my sister for beta testing to see how hard it was to use. If my sister had any questions or doubts about a feature, I revised it and made the website easier to use. If she got stuck on something, I changed it, and we kept doing that until she could create a post in seconds without questioning "how to".
I am now on to another side project that has to deal with affordable communication services for both individual and business. I had to learn even more than I did, as this will be the very first project where I am working with subscription-based pricing and recurring charges, using Stripe. Always something going on in and something new to learn in programming! I love seeing the results of my work and using things built by my own hands, but I especially love it when other people find it as useful as I do. That is what keeps me in the programming world!