Looking back on my trajectory as a developer, it’s been a slow dive into the hidden depths of tech—from UX designer to Front End Developer, then Backend Developer, and finally to my current role as a Systems and Network Engineer. This year, I finally checked off a major wishlist item: mastering a systems integration language like C. I’m proud to say I’ve made C my main language, a solid gateway to other heavy hitters like C++, Go, and Rust.
This shift is all about personal preference. I craved a role where I wield real power over the computer’s resources, rather than something crafted to immediately dazzle the masses. I wanted to explore C’s simple yet dangerous landscape, where the art of manual memory management and those delightfully arcane algorithms reign supreme. These skills never go out of style and are infinitely more transferable than endlessly rotating between trendy JavaScript frameworks and never quite nailing one. For anyone trying to learn web development on their own, expecting to land a job while still enjoying a life outside work, it’s nothing short of a nightmare.
I don’t regret my intense year immersed in Web Development, though. It taught me commitment, persistence, problem-solving, and the fine art of breaking down colossal tasks into bite-sized challenges. But after wrestling with the torment of npm packages and tangled dependencies, I craved a return to basics: a language that feels unpretentious and honest. Despite clocking countless hours of code, I ended up with so few web projects to show for it, because every time I added one tiny feature, the whole thing would break, leaving me to spend agonizing weekends on bug fixes.
So moving forward, I’m sharing my insights straight from the trenches of systems programming. You could say my JavaScript burnout got so severe that I switched my aspirations, from singing its praises to being downright allergic to it. If you’ve ever felt that same way, consider this an invitation to rethink what it means to truly “control” the machine.
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