in 2019 i started studying python to learn the fundamentals for roblox lua. i got into making copy-pasted django apps but hit roadblocks when I wanted client-side interactivity. after that i started studying js really hard via MDN’s guides and I was love-struck, but I stopped due to depression over the pandemic.
after finding some help, i had a more level head and I started studying lua for roblox game dev in 2021 and loved it, since my ultimate goal is game development to make a big profit. but roblox moderation & platform changes fell short of my values (user safety became a big issue, and the most popular games that drive a lot of revenue are cash grabs which take advantage of psychology (bright lights, daily spinners, single-use purchases) and promote gambling which aren’t healthy for kids). so i stopped and started to study c#.
i studied c# in 2021-2023 and got really good. I was advanced with asynchronous and parallel computing, and was easing into unity programming. but then i went to college and didn’t have enough time to learn. and i’ve forgotten it all now 
i dropped out of college in 2023, since I couldn’t take studying all of that just to not have enough time to learn my favorite language. i would have rather worked mcdonalds all my life if it meant i could study c# for the rest of my days in bliss.
around 2023 i realized i was in a toxic home and so on a whim I decided to self-study web dev to get out, since i thought it was a really fast way to get a job as a coder. I also wanted to prove to my family that I could make something of myself and show them that I could get a coding job without college. according to some youtube videos i watched they promised 3 months, 6 months and 1 year timeframes. so i decided to study django, since i had learned python in the past.
so I took a year, and studied in order HTML, CSS via MDN, PostgreSQL (intermediate-advanced), learned advanced python (not up to asynchronous computing though), AWS Cloud Practitioner (I got 95% to a place where I could have gotten certified, but I stopped since I though that cloud wasn’t my goal but web dev, and began to study Django.
During this time, the only thing which motivated me was thinking about the technology’s application in game development. How I could spin up game servers with AWS, or make an authentication api in Django to allow cross-platform data sharing if I were to make a game. It placed a fire to learn in me.
I learned the basics of django (quite hard), but sadly I found out that there were no in-person django jobs in a 50mile radius of my location. So I decided to go back to community college to get a web developer certification. This certification covers HTML, CSS, Intermediate Python, JavaScript basics, jQuery, WordPress basics, and CPanel basics.
A family member told me about a local non-profit who wanted a website. The pay was about $100-$200/month. It was low but I was willing to take it to put it on my resume. I had only one unpublished django project (a social app with profiles friends feature, follower feature, and the ability to share your learning). It had been more than a year since I used django, so I decided on WordPress. Their site is very old and doesn’t have a sitemap. I needed to port all the content over to the wordpress site and also archive the site, so I began work on an intricate sitemap generator, archive.org archiver, and made a small effort at a wordpress content uploader from scraped pages. It was crazy hard and I hadn’t finished, but I wanted to be sure that I was going to be paid if I was doing this much hard work. So i emailed about sending a W9 over, and instantly there was radio silence. They weren’t that serious, they might have been disbanding since it was the last year for the org’s main chair member, or they didn’t want to pay me.
So I got a job doing data entry work at a place I found through college. They hire internally and have IT / web dev positions in Python and React.
I feel so defeated though, like all my progress always falls short. I’ve forgotten most of my C#, SQL, AWS, Advanced Python, and Django knowledge. I have very few completed projects to showcase. I want to be like the big guys who at 20/21 have all these projects and stuff. But I also need to keep in mind that my background of a very toxic home affects my ability to learn/do/my choices, etc. Also lack of sleep due to the stress of toxicity.
I made a promise to myself, that I will never stop learning the core triad of HTML, CSS, and JS. I’m not sure if I want to continue with JS, but I do want to learn CSS and C# since there’s a game engine that uses it for UI which I want to learn. But to level up at my job I’ll need JS. I find that I learn best by focusing on one technology, learning it well, and then moving onto the next. Right now I’m almost done reading the W3C specification on Flexbox, and once I master flexbox I’ll continue learning CSS until idk.
In my area, C#, Java, ASP.NET, SQL Server, Angular, and React are very hot technologies. My current job has had openings for cyber security where they’ll teach Azure. But idk if I want to go into cloud ops. Idk if I want to be a developer, Idk if I chose this path because i really just want to prove to my parents that I am worthwhile or something, or for quick money to get a job. Maybe this is why I am failing so hard so often? I’ve wanted so badly for a company to recognize my talents and my need for direction, one that will train me, but failed at the in-person networking aspect for a long while until now. And even then, my skills aren’t yet at the level required. All I know is, I will stick with CSS until I die I guess, since it works for both my hobby and potential jobs. But I much prefer code. My favorite thing is to read documentation, and to study the intricacies of a language into expertise. Am I a web developer? Or a game developer? I like SQL like I like my game dev (since multiplayer games would utilize sql for data storage). I want to study C# Async again and just go all out and make a multiplayer game engine or something, while being financially independent enough to move out of my toxic parents house. (since they yell, scream, physically intimidate, are codependent on me / mentally crazy and stuff)
It is the only language which I truly feel an unstoppable mindset in, like I have 100% optimism with nothing to stop me, since game dev is my life’s goal. Async programming was a grueling nightmare, but completely worth it when I studied it many years ago. I love it so