“hard work overrides talent” Curtis 50 Cent Jackson quote to Kendrick Lamar
I also relate to this a lot because I wouldn’t say that I was super talented growing up. I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by talented people, especially at Parktown Boys’ High School. I was blessed to have so many friends from different backgrounds.
It was amazing to watch my talented friends do their thing, in sports, academic, drama and other activities. Their passion rubbed onto me, so I became passionate.
I found my niche in computer programming, and I still remember the first time I saw a programming language. I had just started High School at Parktown Boys’ High (Best boys’ school in the world). One of my seniors whose nickname was snakey (because of His small frame) was at the computer centre working on His computer science homework. The screen was blue, and the text on the screen was yellow, and I remember seeing it and being so amazed by what I saw on the screen. I didn’t know what I was looking at at the time, but I liked what I was seeing. So I asked Andrew (Snakey) what is that? And He told me this is a programming language called PASCAL. I told Him I want to do this as well. He then said that I must work hard to understand programming basics because once I know the building blocks of programming and have a solid foundation, I’ll code anything. So my journey began.
In 2005 I started my professional software development career at a small IT company called amaDigital. There I was given the opportunity to work with clients and build entire web applications. Fast forward many years later, and I am now a Tech Lead working at a large corporate. As I said at the beginning of this blog post I’m not the most talented person, what I have is the ability to visualise what I want, and I put in the hard work necessary to make it happen.
Being a programmer is incredible. There’s so many cool tools & techniques being created by excellent programmers. I believe it’s my responsibility to use these tools & techniques to develop applications that will somehow contribute to society. It would be great to be known as “that zuluCoda guy” who created a fantastic web app that revolutionised how people do business in Africa. And When they ask me, How I did it? I’ll say Hard Work and self-belief.