I consider myself lucky to have had an eclectic experience in my working lifetime as far as the industries I was fortunate enough to have worked in. Some have included fundraising in the non-profit sector, information technology, and a considerable amount of customer service, most notably as a training coordinator for the MTA's para-transit program in New York City. My most recent tenure was as an aircraft mechanic and inspector in central Florida.

I felt that I had experienced all that the aviation maintenance industry had to offer, and noticed that a prolonged career as an Av Tech would likely take its toll on my physical health, as I had so often seen with many of my fellow colleagues, who developed health issues that compromised their quality of life. I realized that this would not be a career that I could retire in, as much as I enjoyed it, so I had to find an alternative.

I knew I wanted to join an industry that was growing and advancing rapidly, and would always keep me challenged and inspired. As luck would have it, upon reflection of my past experiences, there was one prominent recurring theme that gave me a clue.

In most of my positions, I had created databases with MS Access and VBA to help organize and streamline my work flow. I created a database application that kept track of the fleet of aircraft for a flight school I had worked for. This included keeping track of the maintenance and compliance with FAA regulations for the fleet and charter service, which was instrumental in significantly improving the accuracy and efficiency of maintaining and archiving records. When working as a claims adjuster, I created a client claims tracker application which included many features that helped benchmark the progress of a claim, since they can be highly complicated. During my tenure as a training coordinator for the MTA's Para-transit program, I created a survey application for the QA team that I managed, which they used to log metrics when monitoring calls. These are just a few examples, and this is what clued me into investigating the world of coding.  Thus my research into the field began.

After surveying through all the information I could find regarding the profession for more than a few months, I came up with a plan. After considering my budget, and the best strategy that would fit my lifestyle, taking a self-paced online course was the best option. I chose the ASP.NET C# route since I had experience with Microsoft software and the Visual Basic for Applications language, so it seemed like a logical choice, and it had the added benefit of being one of the most in demand frameworks in the coding industry. Given that, I settled on Coder Foundry, which seemed to check all the boxes for what I was looking for in a school. It was the only one I could find that taught the .NET C# framework.

Once I was convinced I wanted to get into coding, I started taking tutorials in the basics, HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I did the same for ASP.NET. I wanted to get familiar with the tech before I enrolled. It was certainly a challenge to find up-to-date good quality free tutorials. I had to sift through a minutia of content to find those few gems that helped me.

At the time of this writing, I had completed the content in the Coder Foundry self-paced course. As you can see, this blog is my most recent achievement. I am very pleased with my decision for a web development career. As I predicted, I am very inspired by the challenge of this growing industry, and am especially looking forward to all the amazing applications I will get to build and contribute to, including my ambition to rebuild my legacy MS Access applications in the .NET framework, which is something I have always aspired to do.

At this point, after considering my tenure as an Av Tech, compared to my new vocation, I've made an interesting observation. As far as the aviation industry goes, the mechanical technology has pretty much remained the same. Although the recent introduction of electric propulsion is promising, it is still in it's infancy. Any innovation would certainly have an impact, but its influence would be confined to aviation, not necessarily having an impact on the whole world, since the physics of aerodynamics will never change. However, most would agree that the coding industry is on the brink of creating a major paradigm shift that will influence the whole world, and virtually every industry under the sun. It is a very exciting time, with so many variables as to confuse experts' predictions. Coding is the new frontier.