How I started my thirteen-year-old programming career.

Looking for a way to code? Follow how I started out.

I was born to a tech family, my father was a CTO of a company called 99X, all the tech exposure I had was from that.

I was a little kid when I was first introduced to the word programming. My father played a major role in introducing me to programming. At first, I didn’t like it all(i thought it was too much work). My father had tried major ways to get me to do some programming but as a kid, I was interested in other things. I didn’t see the real beauty of programming until I was introduced to scratch. I loved making games out of it but was still lacking the passion. I was always thinking big to build huge games, but nothing really succeeded😂. Then I tried learning java, but again it was too complicated. 😅

I still remember that day I started to program. I woke up with a passion to move forward in me, I had a force pulling me. I knew I would have to work hard.

I started programming. I started learning simple python. I started to form the basics. Within a day I finished all the tutorials I could find. My father sat beside me teaching all the concepts. The drive and passion for my career started from that day. Yes, I was still a kid. The first-ever app I built was a calculator. I kept making improvements to it. I had wild imaginations to add this and that. I overcame that urge of doing big things quickly. Soon I was 13. I started making solutions that helped people during covid-19. Covid-19 was my opportunity to grow. I soon made simple real-world apps that hosted. I created over 3 apps and out of that, I hosted one. The drive came to me again. My father owned a secondary company that ran on its own and wanted an e-learning platform. I instantly started doing it. I made quick sketches day and night until I got an idea of what I was doing. I built this using a javascript framework. I would highly recommend it to any beginner. It’s none other than Vue Js. One of the simplest frontend frameworks ever. I spent another week learning it.

I had begun and started full-stack programming from that day. I finished that website in two months with loads of help from my father. When I presented it they took it but never used it. I didn’t go asking them again. I understand that the code quality was not so good. However, I didn’t let my emotions drop me down, I took this on a positive note(I learned a lot). I promised myself that From here onwards I turned from my father to the internet, my best friend. I learned many languages and built many apps. React, JavaScript, Go Lang, Java, Angular, C#, .net core, typescript, PHP, etc. I built around 5 full-stack applications during this year 2020. I still currently develop applications for my father’s business. I make a lot of public service apps. Through my father’s business, I met my best friend for programming, Lehan Gajanayake. He was the only teen, my age, who had the ‘drive’. We together started achieving greater heights, startup ideas to small applications and arguments. I am highly confident to say that the two of us are the youngest programmers in Sri Lanka, along with a few people that I taught while going forward in my journey, Uvindu Pathirana. We are currently focused on changing the idea that “kids can code”.

I would like to leave you with my end quote and remember this. “Age is just a number”.