Sam Blaha

What drew you to the tech industry?

While working as an Aviation Ordnanceman in the Navy aboard the USS Ronald Reagan Aircraft Carrier, I was talking to one of our fighter pilots who I respected quite a bit. I asked him what he did before becoming a pilot, and he told me he went to Stanford and got his Computer Science degree. That was my main inspiration for getting into tech – along with the fact I’ve always had a thing for computers.

How has your career evolved since learning with Treehouse, and what work are you doing now?

I was working in corporate IT as a Windows admin when I first signed up for Treehouse way back in 2014. When I was laid off in 2020, I had time to attend another coding bootcamp. Honestly, I breezed through the bootcamp and didn’t learn too much because of all the knowledge I had gained from Treehouse. Treehouse was far more effective than the bootcamp.

I love Treehouse because of their presentation and how well the lessons are scaled to gradually become more challenging – never too much of a difficulty spike.

I now work for PNC Bank as a Software Developer, working with Java. I still have a passion for web development and always am working with the React library (my personal favorite). I also enjoy iOS development with Swift and plan on creating some cool apps to put on the App Store (just for fun).

What advice would you give others just starting their learning path at Treehouse?

My best advice is to start with the language or tech that interests you most. If you aren’t enjoying it, switch. If you think it’s too hard, stick with it. Don’t think it just will come naturally or you aren’t cut out for it. Learning how to program – more importantly, how to think like a computer – is definitely not easy!

Working in tech is wonderful because it is always changing and evolving. I think crypto and Web3 are the most exciting things in tech. So many cool changes are coming.

Most importantly, you must have a passion for creating and developing. It is a challenging career choice and that must excite you. It is always changing, and you will often be pushed past your threshold.

Learning to develop taught me how to think and helped me mature as a person. It was yet another challenge that I had to overcome, and I am so glad that I stuck with it. Every day I am challenged by it. You just have to always be willing to take on the challenge – the best part is the sense of accomplishment for doing so. 

I still question if I am smart enough. . . The answer is I am, and so are you.

Learn to code with Treehouse

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