I worked for the same company for 20 years, until last week. I’m now getting ready to join the December cohort at Makers Academy in Silicon Roundabout for a 3 month, full time course, learning Ruby on Rails, HTML5 and much more to take me from zero to “entry level programmer”.

Why?

My main reasons are;

• I enjoy creating things – understanding code allows you to build stuff.
• I had stopped learning new stuff – I’d had a fantastic career but wanted to do something different.
• I love eCommerce – I spent half my career to date working on the business side of the web, great to supplement that experience with some tech know-how.
• I’ve got a load of business ideas that need coding – so why not give it a go myself.

How am I feeling about it?

Excited – having been a one-company man the last 20 years it’s exciting to look forward to a new environment, people and culture.

Nervous – it’s been a long time since I’ve been in such a learning environment; I hope the grey cells are up to it.

What are my hopes for after I’ve completed the course?

At this stage I’m keeping a really open mind as to what I will do after the course. Become a junior developer, join a start-up, get back into a senior eCommerce position in an established company or venture forth on my own. All these are possible options, but I’ll wait until I finish the course before figuring that out.