What Sparked Me to Learn Programming?

In early 2024, I was working as a cashier at a local supermarket in New Zealand. My role often involved manual inventory management — counting items, checking stock levels and sale status with only paper.

Although I wasn’t in a technical position, I began to notice small inefficiencies piling up: stock mismatches, human errors, and time wasted on repetitive tasks. At the time, I had no knowledge of programming. But I did have curiosity — and a desire to improve how we worked.

I thought:
“There must be a better way than copying things over by hand.”

I searched for a simple digital tool that could help automate some of the tasks, and I introduced it to my team. That small improvement made a noticeable difference — not only in reducing errors, but also in making the work feel lighter.

But I wasn’t satisfied. I began to wonder:

What if I could build something even better, tailored for the real needs I see every day?

My Programming Journey

That question became the starting point of my journey into programming. I began learning skills on my own — not just to “code,” but to understand how software works and how I could one day build real-world solutions myself.

Instead of studying theory first and waiting to feel “ready,” I jumped into building real web applications. — learning through online courses, official documentation, and by collaborating with another developer.
I deployed them, made mistakes, and learned essential concepts along the way as they became necessary.

Over the past year, I’ve worked with technologies like JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Node.js, MongoDB, and Chrome Extension APIs, etc.
Now, I’m continuing to expand my skillset by learning C# and .NET, exploring how to build more scalable and structured backend systems.

My learning hasn’t been easy, but the more I learn, the more confident I become — not only in code, but in solving problems from a new perspective.

Applying What I’ve Learned

I have been developing my own Chrome extension (LingoScribe GitHub) to help language learners like myself — using real Netflix subtitles as part of a typing-based learning experience — where users listen to Netflix dialogue and type what they hear with dual subtitles functionality.

I spent a significant amount of time structuring the architecture, since Chrome extensions require strict separation between components like service workers, content scripts, and UI layers.

What made this project even more special was that it was my very first time working with another developer. The frontend code was much stronger and more advanced than anything I’d built on my own before — and I learned so much through the process.

For me, programming started not with a grand vision, but with a simple question:

Can I make things better for us?