💃 I got into tech really young, but in the most random way!
1️⃣ When I was 6, I used to play a game called The Sims 2 ALL THE TIME (still do btw). Eventually I wanted to design items to add to the game and began using GimpShop to do so. That set off the initial spark!
2️⃣ As a tween my favorite young girls' magazine was called "Julie". One day I read an article in it about a girl who had her own blog and I thought it was the coolest thing ever! I thought creating a website would be hard to do as a kid but next thing I knew I was on Blogger creating my own blog. All of a sudden, I realized how accessible technology actually was.
3️⃣ I also used to play alot of girls' life simulation games like MaBimbo (😅) and OhMyDollz.
I loooved these games and wanted to create my own. So I found a platform called Webidev (still exists!) that allowed me to create my own game and taught me about variables and conditionals way before I even knew what Javascript was.
4️⃣ At 11 I decided I wanted to build my website from scratch and learned HTML and CSS on a site that's now called Openclassrooms.com. I didn't have internet at home at the time and used free wifi or went to a cybercafe (a place you go when you don't have internet) to code. The adults there used to wonder what the heck I was doing and they were a little confused lol.
5️⃣ Soon afterwards, I learned Javascript and AngularJS and built a cosmetics web app that I wrote about when applying to college. I lived in Ivory Coast at the time and some of my teachers thought I should major in Business or Accounting instead of Computer Science. I'm glad I stuck with what I loved most because in the US it's a completely different story!
🤓 Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I had never stumbled upon that girl's article. We really have no idea how much our stories can impact others 🤯 and how much little things can change the trajectory of our lives.