Q: Tell us about yourself

I’m Cesar, and I live in the City of Chihuahua in México. I have a degree in music from the University of Texas, and I’m doing a master’s in education. I currently work as a professor in a teacher’s college. I love teaching, but I also love creating things – especially, if doing so involves technology – which is why I’ve set my professional goals towards becoming a full-time developer.

Q: How did you decide to learn to code?

As a musician and an educational technologist, I already had some experience with code, albeit quite limited. For example, making music/audio programs for my music projects or scripts for e-learning modules. My brother is a web developer, and I got exposed to it through him. It seemed challenging and a bit overwhelming at first, but that’s partly what attracted me to it: I love challenges and complex things. I started learning HTML, CSS & JavaScript through online tutorials, and after a year or so, I helped a couple of local businesses with their websites; this was an experience that helped me realize I needed to learn a lot more if I ever wanted to be a professional developer.

Q: How do you like learning online?

I am actually quite familiar with online learning and teaching. At work, I teach courses in educational technology, instructional design, and e-learning. Also, since the outbreak of COVID-19, I started to facilitate all my courses online, so I’m quite used to being on the teacher’s side. Altcademy is nice because it encourages me to keep up with the learning pace and finish all the exercises and projects after learning the concepts.

Q: What are your future goals?

I’d like to change my career path, but first I’ll need real-life working experience as a developer. To start, looking for remote work seems to be a good alternative since there aren’t many developer jobs where I live; hopefully, this will eventually lead to a full-time job, as it did in my brother’s case. In the meantime, I’d also like to develop and maintain a personal project; it could be a web site or a web app. Also, I’m quite interested in blockchain development, so I may continue my learning path there.