My Developer Story

[Sabry 1,072]

N.B: I'm not a Developer at Tanki Online, I'm a student working to be a developer somewhere else

 

Greetings everyone!

 

After such a long time, I've decided to write another article like the old good time, but this time in English . Soo you might wonder what would it be about and if that's worth reading till the end, that's actually a good question that I'll let you judge! The main reason is because I haven't written for such a long time, and still, it's among the things I really like to do. Technically, it could also be on a diary in this case, or even a blog, but eh, isn't that any better to write inside a community?

 

Soo, this time, expect some history about coding and development and where it all begun.

 

1. Where it all started
2. Where it led
3. Where it will (hopefully) lead
4. The magic of coding

 

Where it all started

 

I think it all started from when I was at high school, and I just wanted to make my own website, my own app, my own software, my own discord bot so I first tried mobile building tools, website creations, and that's really from this willing that I took school lessons in Python with some "exercises" to do about "Help this person counting the most kilometers he did per day". Those exercises weren't the ones I liked the most, but I really always liked building, I usually compare what I do now with what I used to do in the past playing LEGO. I was always trying to come up with something new and useful, well it didn't always work, to be frank, it even failed a lot of times, but there were also successes born from that. I think it came from the willing of creating something new. 

 

Then for christmas, I remember I received a book where I learnt HTML. Basically, it really started with copying lines of code, and expecting a result, that's really what taught me about design, or nowadays for those coding would call it css :). I've really also learnt that on a website, nothing is random. To explain myself there, In the past I knew websites were coded, especially when I found out about inspect element, but I just thought there was a base of code added, and the images/buttons were automatically set up in the right place, in other words I believed in magic. So, that went a bit tough since I was bad with css so my first website was ugly. 

 

What I wondered the most was about "How can I publish my website?", "How does the css communicate with the main code, especially on different files?". In fact to me, if those were in different files, there was absolutely no way this would work. Little did he know, there are imports . Next up, I started using "Google Sites" and getting used of making some good designs. Of course this is 100 times easier with a Drag & Drop system and you just set it up. For one year or two, it convinced me, but then I realised the freedom from it wasn't that much actually, you're still trapped with features you'd like to add, but that you cannot, one easy example: How can you make a discord webhook send a message using Google sites? Now I know the answer, and for the spoiler alert (psst, there's still time to skip this part if you don't want a spoiler), you need a backend to say it easily.

 

Spoiler

 

That's not my very first website (trust me, you don't want to see it :D), but it's one of them, made from Google sites. It was for a Discord bot that led me quite far in coding, and I'm proud of that, but unfortunately, it's no longer actively maintained due to lack of interest. One of my biggest success was this message that really made me happy:

Spoiler

 

Next up in my career, if I should say so, I went to a coding school. That's one of the school where you really realize that you knew almost nothing at coding before entering in it. That's what happened to me, the start was a bit tough because I really thought everything was hard, and I was perhaps also thinking too big. The best example I can give was when there was a program we had to do which cleans some specific files of your PC, and I thought we were told to make a software like CCleaner. No, it wasn't that at all, in reality it was just 2 poor lines of code.

 

We also had (now it's over for me since I'm at the end of my third year, time flies) a robot checking the code, checking cheats and testing your code, we were told it was actually trying to break it, which more or less scared me, but taught a lot. It was intense working, 8 hours a day during a month from Monday to Sunday (yes, even Sunday, and it was the whole week), from 07 UTC till 19 UTC. It was a very tough time with a few sleep, and honestly, I really felt like going crazy after 3 weeks, I wasn't really about to think by myself anymore.

 

This is an example of this dear robot which has sometimes been my friend, or sometimes my enemy

Spoiler

 

We also had a coding style to respect, where violations removes you points.

 

Where it led

 

Despite the tough moments, that's how I met all my friends I know nowadays, we're approximately 15 and that was a really great moment of helping each other, team projects. 

 

In my side, I've been interested about documentations, so I've discovered MediaWiki, which is a php tool for making your own wiki. This is exactly the same tool as Wikipedia. I even managed to answer my own question about hosting. I found a self-made platform which allows you to make your own php project and host it for free. It had a Mediawiki template, and it really was super satisfying when I managed to host my first website "made from scratch". In reality, it was from a template, but I managed to add extensions to it, and that's really thanks to that and coding in general that I've learnt about reading documentations. 

 

My first year was complicated, and I almost failed it, I practiced a language I didn't like that much (which is C), and honestly, at the end of it, I was a bit lost. I actually thought coding was like that for every languages, and that it wouldn't really be funny. If only I knew how wrong I was, I passed the first year at the end, and for the second year, I've discovered C++. It was completely different from it, that's how I made the difference between high level language (like C++) and low level languages (like Assembly). I've also learnt about another language called "Haskell" where it was a bit special. I thought it was very easy at first but well..there was a lot of things making no sense.

 

For those who like coding, here's a preview 

Spoiler

 

I'll be honest: this wasn't any similar to anything I've done till now. But I really enjoyed C++, you don't have to pay attention to your memory, which I hated to do in C along with linked lists. Honestly inheritance, abstraction (feel free to Google that) were things I loved. Then I've had my projects, and there I discovered OOP, network programming and even concurrent programming. Out of the 3, I loved the most network programming and concurrent programming, such as threads (no, it's different from Discord feature), and server/clients in general. I've also found out about the lowest level language called assembly. For this language, you must think about everything, that's the very last language closest to the computer that a human can still understand.

 

This is a code about "Hello world", if you're familiar with coding, you should know it takes one line of code for that usually. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Then, the final year project arrived, and it scared me a bit to be honest, we had to do  server, a client system, and AI. I was responsible for making AI along with a friend.

 

Spoiler

Those are characters that have to upgrade themselves using AI.

 

Spoiler

 

After doing that, I really found out that AI was if/else conditions, and the effect is really magic from here.

 

 

 

 

For web coding, in the past, I used to code in php and take templates from github to create my own tools, I remember making a virtual shop with discord on my platform, but I found php too complicated for that although I made it. Later on, I also really had a huge interest for Discord dashboards and I've decided to make a Discord Dashboard template using it

 

Spoiler

 

 

That's one moment where I've been pretty happy at it because I also really wanted to make my own bot dashboard, and despite the ugly design, I managed to make it in php. 

 

Now about my third year, we had to do 2 big projects, the first one was about making something like Zapier. A system that can do anything, such as "If it rains, then send me an email". For that, we had to use oauth, and APIs. That's one project I appreciated the most because I really learnt a lot from it, and you can basically do anything you want there, you can create a repository using code. That's just awesome in my opinion. 

 

Below is an example of the interface I've made with my group:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Next up, the second project was about making a custom coding language. Ours looked like this:

 

Spoiler

I've thought at first it was super hard to make a custom coding language, but in reality, not really, and I must say I was very happy of that.

 

Where it will (hopefully) lead

 

So now that's currently what I do, I've also used in the past to do/contribute to some coding projects to people sending me private messages, and this is where my next personal project led. A website where a user can request anything to a developer and it is being made with a progress system. I also found out about new features that makes your website way better, and that's what I can proudly show as a dashboard V2 design for another purpose.

 

Spoiler

 

I've also used skills from previous projects to implement them there, that's why I added a system where you can make your own discord server, make your own repository, everything thanks to the platform. It also have a custom coding language that allows you to simulate a website. I think that's one of my proudest moment. That's also at this moment that I gave up with php and replaced it with react js and node js.

 

 

The magic of coding

 

This part will especially act as a conclusion. If you've read till here, huge thanks, I really hope you appreciated the whole story. Well to conclude, I'd say after learning step by step, you'll really reach a point where you'll be basically free to make anything you want, you do think about a system, and a few weeks later, thanks to your knowledge, you can implement it, and that's really what I find interesting when coding because then you've got that full freedom allowing you to design what you'd like. You could even make a system that would create a Github website for you, just get the motivation, and learn from what failed, because, otherwise the only one who can stop you from doing this is yourself.

 

That's pretty much it for me, hopefully you liked the article . I feel like I should add my reporter avatar like I used to back in the past!

 

P.S: For non-coders, sorry for few technical parts sometimes 

 

 

[Venerable 2,967]

Wow, Sabry. This is beautiful.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are a very talented programmer (I guess it's safe to call you a Full Stack Web Developer now, eh?)! 

Your English has also improved so much! I remember the days when we were Reporters. Dynasty and you ruled the French Newspaper (I don't know what Regency and Angieclown did LOL), and you still had the passion for writing in English. Keep it up, man. I wish you the very best for your future projects and learning experiences!

[Sabry 1,072]

On 6/24/2024 at 9:15 AM, Venerable said:

you are a very talented programmer

Thank you very much, have come through a very long way, from making ugly and pretty useless things to projects that can really become useful . I hope you'll reach that goal too if that's what you want.

On 6/24/2024 at 9:15 AM, Venerable said:

I guess it's safe to call you a Full Stack Web Developer now, eh?)

I guess so . I've discovered soo much, OOP, network programming, functional programming, concurrent programming, low & high level languages, devops, AI, front end, and backend, mobile coding (P.S: Oauth in mobile is awful in my opinion that's very dark magic), Cybersecurity and Data science.

 

On 6/24/2024 at 9:15 AM, Venerable said:

Your English has also improved so much! I remember the days when we were Reporters. Dynasty and you ruled the French Newspaper (I don't know what Regency and Angieclown did LOL), and you still had the passion for writing in English. Keep it up, man. I wish you the very best for your future projects and learning experiences!

Came through a long way there too, to be honest, I think I've done pretty much the same distance both from being a reporter till today compared to coding, but you honestly did too, and that's really great that you became the best version of yourself as well . 

[Incorp 2,084]

Nice. I had no idea sparkles was yours its an awesome bot. Wish you luck down the road.

 

ohh yeah, your old nick was sabry.superman lool and i remember there was another guy called sabrytoun.superman right?

[Venerable 2,967]

On 7/17/2024 at 10:59 PM, Incorp said:

ohh yeah, your old nick was sabry.superman lool and i remember there was another guy called sabrytoun.superman right?

[Person_Random 4,991]

Popped into the writer's corner to look for a few older pieces and came across this. This is a great read - it's exciting to see where you started and how far you've come!

I remember back in 2020 you often mentioned programming when we had conversations and were always eager to show me what you had learned. Up until that point, I hadn't met someone who was so passionate about a topic like you were. Your enjoyment for programming has always shone through and it's so great to know that it's continued as you picked up new technologies and took on larger projects!

Any insight into your future plans - domains of computer science that you might be interested in or fields of development you hope to work in?

[Sabry 1,072]

Wow, I came back to this topic, and didn't see so many new posts were added

On 7/17/2024 at 7:29 PM, Incorp said:

Nice. I had no idea sparkles was yours its an awesome bot. Wish you luck down the road.

 

Yeah, it was me who created it, and I'm the owner of it, I'm glad to read that