hi 👋! welcome to my blog where i excessively use emojis and gifs. this is my first post and i think some introduction is in order.
👽 who am i?
i’m behnam. it’s persian name that means “someone with a good reputation” and i work with computers. i’m the guy my folks call for techie stuff for as long as i can remember.
🧙 my story
👶 init
i was raised while people were using windows 98 and i started using the family computer when it was using the latest and greatest windows Me. i saw the transformation of CRT monitors to LCDs and floppy disks to CDs. i even got caught not sleeping because of the noise that dial-up made so you can imagine my surprise when i was able to connect to the internet without any cable with a fast 128 kbps connection - slow even back then - and could browse the internet on my phone even. 🛸
📚 progress
surprisingly my initial try to learn programming failed when i got my hands on a visual basic ide. it turns out you need to be able to understand english to be able to understand what you’re doing. i didn’t know this at that time and i thought i don’t have what it takes to do it, understandable for an 8-9 y/o kid.
but it didn’t end there. with the help of a worn out oxford dictionary and many failed trials i became known as the person that my folks went to when their gadgets didn’t work. and because of that my dad suggested i study computers in university. so i decided not to study japanese 🇯🇵 and packed up to become a computer engineer. i’m not saying it was the right or wrong decision btw 👀.
i figured i can install android apps (they were new back then) so let’s learn sh*t 😤. i signed up for the first computer engineering course with a mouthful of a title that i came across - my mom found it btw - which was about microsoft servers and services. imo it was about picking a window and clicking “Next” a couple of times to enable something. i impressed the course teacher, who then suggested i join a competition. a slight problem, it required me to work with cisco devices and linux servers and as you can imagine i had no idea what they were.
so at lightning speed 💨, i studied cisco stuff 🖧 for the competition practicing using emulators. it was my first experience learning everything for free with the help of the internet. oh and if you are curious, the competition
at this point i knew a bit about network, but i kept failing university’s programming course. my initial attempt was learning ruby on my own (because it was the first google result 🙂↕️). next i signed up for a c++ course which actually helped me make heads and tails of this black magic. next some android programming 📱, and then linux 🐧, and then some security 🥷…
yes, i was trying everything because i was curious and it was affordable. i wouldn’t do the same now though 👀, but that’s a story for another day.
👷 work
i took the first job that i was offered which was in an internet cafe connecting computers and printers and such bs, but thankfully lasted for less than a month as i found another fun job being an isp support agent. it was fun to be screamed at by random people on the phone in 3 shifts 🫠. thankfully i didn’t need the money after 6 months so i went back to university.
i did some r&d towards the end of my university days and later joined an enterprise as a service desk engineer, another support role during which i noticed some repetitive work that were being passed around. i came up with the idea of a simple program that i shared with my manager, and to my surprise he asked me: “can you make it yourself?” my initial reaction was “huh? 😶” i didn’t know how to write a proper program but accepted the challenge. my manager proposed using laravel. i spent the next few weeks learning it. i didn’t know what i was doing, but i kept coding with the little knowledge i had and hacked something together and we launched the tool in 2 months.
to my absolute surprise the app’s users and the requests for new features increased, and before i knew it i had become a developer. a migration later i saw myself doing the same thing plus some IT consulting here and there. i was able to get my first remote job as a developer, and then another one, and i’m still doing the same thing and still learning like it’s the first day.
❓ why
while dealing with network stuff i started feeling like i’m the consumer of a bunch of ready-made tools and i was not actually doing anything. the vendor has already taken care of everything and i just have to click here and there and type something to tell the device how i want it to behave. but i couldn’t create stuff the way i imagined them, that’s why i became interested in programming 💻.
⏭️ what’s next?
how should i know? 🤷♂️ i’m still learning and have a lot to learn. but now my question is whether i can make something that other people will like or not. and i think it would be a waste not to use the internet to get to know people, share and find new friends 😊.
thanks for reading - i hope you’ve liked it. i’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’d like to chat, drop me a dm.