How Automation Helped Me Become a Better Developer

Do you ever think about how your career has progressed over time, from when you started your first job to now? When I think of my career progression, I remember when I was about to graduate. My education was scattered and unfocused due to needing to transfer colleges halfway through. While my peers spent their free time deciding which job offer to accept, I was struggling to get a single job offer.

Even after I did get my first internship and job, imposter syndrome took over and wouldn't let go. I had absolutely zero idea what I was doing in my business analyst internship, and I remember dreading each day that I would be found out as a fraud and fired.

This dread continued in my first job, where it felt like every new hire in my cohort knew what they wanted to do and how to do it. Meanwhile, there I was searching for my first project to work on, with no sense of direction whatsoever. But one day I did the first helpful thing in my career. I sat down and learned something: SAS.

After I studied SAS long enough, I was able to pass the Base and Advanced exams. It was such a fulfilling feeling, and even though I ended up never using SAS again, I'm still very proud of those first certifications.

Eventually I was told to study for and pass the UiPath certification. As I worked to get this certification, I was picking up concepts very fast. Looking back, it's obvious that the reason I found learning UiPath easy was that UiPath's low-code approach is very newcomer-friendly. But another reason I found UiPath easy to learn is that the concept of RPA is extremely simple to grasp, unlike anything from college.

Take the manual process you're given, and use UiPath's low code activities to build the process from A to Z. That's it. No data structures or OOP required. Easy peasy. Even though the world of automation development is much more involved than I thought it was at the time, I finally felt that what I was learning made sense to me.

Learning something is much easier if the context you're learning it in is enjoyable and makes sense. For example, if you like making games, you would find learning C# easy in Unity, or C++ in Unreal Engine. Although you could try to learn C# by making an ASP.NET web app, learning C# this way would be much more involved if you struggle with web development like I did in college.

Once you find that niche you excel in, everything else falls into place. If you've read other articles on this blog, you can probably guess that I ended up learning Node.js through Apify, and Python through Robocorp. Everything I learn is from the same automation perspective. If I wanted to learn Go, I wouldn't try to develop a web service. I'd start learning it by using it in a Pipedream flow.

This concept is even true for non-development topics. Your favorite subject in high school was almost certainly the one you learned the most about. Dedicating a bit of time to the areas you thrive in is a great way to foster lifelong learning. For me, I thrive in automation development, and I don't see this changing anytime soon.

One last thing - it's incredibly unlikely that anyone currently in college is reading this, but if by chance you are, and you're in a situation like I was, consider trying RPA. You might like it 😉