Growing as a programmer

i have been fucking around with programing since like grade 7

started with bash and moved on to vb script. even back then my mind was going wild with all the possibilities of programing. i remember writing targeted viruses which would delete files from the pc of people i hated and passing it via pendrives in school.

later in computer class i learned Qbasic and was having alot of fun with it

in collage i learned C and after that i guess i just stopped coding for a while. got lost in the world of working a fulltime job. around 2019 i got back into the programming world picked up C# and things just blew up from there. looking back its hard to tell if i really grew as a programmer or not. but looking at the bigger picture i can safely say that im happy with my growth.

i think the main thing i learned overtime is that tutorial videos are useless. atleast for me. now when im stuck i go straight to the docs. a main thing i noticed about my growth is how i find info. old me would have gone straight for a tutorial but the new me goes to the source of the issue. does research. im not even a javascript or a php dev but i can easily pick up those languages and get working with them without any trouble. this would have been impossible for the old me. goes to show that reading docs can make you a better dev

another thing i learned is that i dont stick to a single language. i have gotten really good at looking at what needs tp be done and picking the best language for the job. doing the job while taking up the least amount of storage time and bandwith and also being reliable is my goals now. so basically any language but java

i also noticed that i have gotten better at reading code. except for cpp code you cant make me read cpp code for the life of me. but like i said its like reading a book at this point. any well written open source code i see i can easily pick it up and mod it. i dont even know python but i have found myself working on python code

after realizing that i have grown as a dev i decided to test my abilities

so i made an android app

a web app

and a unity game

and it surprised mw how fast i could do it. i remember a few years back i installed unity and had no idea how to write a single line of code

same for android apps. but now its so easy for me to do what i want.

its like i have the basic understanding of most languages

i think that main factor for this is that all languages are the same

the concept is there

variables holds values

loops does a task for a given time

conditions checks stuff

input and output

read and write

once you get those concepts its just finding the syntax for the language youre working with

in conclusion young me would be proud of who i am today. and i am happy with my current growth and will continue to learn more and get better as a programmer