Think like a Developer…act like a Developer….be a Developer

Some where around 1997, when I was in my early 20′s, I got tired of the manual labor jobs and I thought to myself, it was time to maybe figure out what I wanted to be. Well, that happened to be when I discovered computer gaming. My world revolved around how fast my computer could go and how to get the most out of my 56k modem. Even though I was driving a delivery truck at the time, I thought about the computer all the time.

Then after I had that all worked out, I discovered LAN parties. We spent more time figuring out network problems than we did gaming. So that led me to want to know all about LAN’s and networking. Which led into servers and using a server to host our games rather than our pc’s trying to pull double duty.

My point is I started off in IT by trying to understand what I needed to make my gaming sessions more productive. It just happened that I enjoyed it so much I spent a lot of free time working on it. Now that I have been doing Sys Admin work for so long I’ve become bored and I want to move into development. The problem is, my Admin experiences are overshadowing my developing developer mind.

I got to thinking about this lately, and I’ve come to realize that for me to make the transisition from Admin to developer, I need to think like a developer, act like a developer, and just be ….. a developer. Granted with school, it’s a little easier for me to focus on development than it was jumping from delivery driver to Sys Admin, but it’s essentially the same thing again. I have to spend the time working on it beyond school.

I also need to take it in smaller chunks like I did in the beginning. I don’t suppose you can rush learning.

“You must unlearn what you have learned” - Master Yoda