whoami
Hi, I’m Liam. I am the author of all these posts. As of writing this I am in my young twenties and a software developer based in South Africa. I am currently employed as Software Development Engineer I for Amazon Web Services or better known as AWS1. I utterly love squash! I’ve been playing for 5 years, going on 6 and each year, a plethora of new challenges arise. On the topic of sport, I have to mention that I enjoy rugby just as much! I stopped playing because of squash and time, but each year I get an immense urge to pick up a rugby ball again. Lastly, I have to mention my slight gym addiction. I’ve been on and off for years and have no end in sight. Nothing beats a pump and the pain a day or two later.
The journey
I’ve lived in SA my whole life and always had a passion for anything related to a computer. I started at a young age playing around with functions in Excel and even did an oral about Excel in grade 51. Fast forward to high school and I’m taking IT (information technology) as a subject and absolutely love it! My first year taking the subject we got introduced to Java, but sadly the next 2 years we were forced to use Delphi2. For our final project we had to build a mini app that incorporated user’s info with a small database. I ended up losing quite a few marks for the project as I never finished it… The reason will shock you! I got bored of the requirements and started adding to the project without completing the original spec (talk about a future dev in the making!).
University
The next year I joined Stellenbosh University studying a undergraduate degree in mathematical sciences with a main stream in computer science. For brevity sake I won’t mention all the subjects I took, but look out for the future dated post of a summary of each of the subjects!
Fast forward another 2 years and we’re in the middle of the infamous Covid global pandemic… I am a third year student, sitting at home each day and have to focus on my degree. I had the benefit of enjoying working from home and simultaneously got a web development project that was the changing point for my developing career! In essence the project consisted of building a web or phone based app which has a frontend, backend and database. The chosen tech stack was up to the group of students, but a more difficult stack results in more marks3. While choosing groups, our head demi proposed a different, more intense project, that will result in extra marks and working with a more experienced developer. I thought this idea was great and joined the team which consisted of myself, another undergrad and the demi which was busy with his masters degree.
This project absolutely changed my life! I got introduced to actual Git, Kotlin, Flutter, Dart, CI/CD and software engineering. We built an Android app called LOOP which allowed location based communities to make posts within groups. Nothing too fancy looking back but at the time this was eye opening.
First employment
Last time fast forwarding; fast forward to the end of my honours degree1. A close friend of mine asked to help develop an app which displays sensor data on a simple web dashboard. This project lasted about 2 months and it was my first employment. Although this was an exciting opportunity, I completely screwed it up 
. I didn’t understand the full requirements and over estimated my abilities in time management. But, (there’s always a but) I finished the project and started looking for my next challenge.
Dream job
I applied to many jobs on LinkedIn and while applying like crazy my best mate from University mentioned that I should apply to AWS. Having no experience, below average marks and coming out of a slight failure of a project, I had little to no hope. But like every fairytale it ended with an email telling me that the all mighty AWS wants to interview me! I cannot fully describe the feeling after that email, but for reference it’s like winning the lottery but they tell you to fight a UFC champion to claim the prize.
The next 2 weeks consisted of Leetcode, YouTube, mock interviews, learning what the hell a leadership principle is and figuring out how I can woo my interviewer. The day of the interview creeped up and I got more anxious than ever before, but I was feeling confident. I slept well, practiced my graph traversals, sorting algorithms, data structures and about a million other things, and then the day of the interview creeped up…
Unlike a fairytale I completely bombed it. I got ask to merge 2 sorted integer arrays. After about 25 minutes of panic I solve this and they throw the curveball:
“Ensure the sorted array consists of only unique values”.
In typical interview panic I fail to complete this task and the interview ends. Now you can guess how I felt the rest of the day…
Boom!!! Another curveball, (well not really, I already mentioned that I’m currently employed at AWS, but try to act amazed!) this is a fairytale! I get the email saying I made it through to the second round of interviews! You can predict what I did for the next 2 weeks. Day of the second round of interviews creep up and I’m more confident than ever! Ask me any data structure and I can tell you about it, I’m on top of the world! I ace all 3 interviews with perfect time and space complexity! After 5 days I get the phone call that I never ever dreamt of because I thought it’s too high of dream. The recruiter tells me I am accepted to AWS as a software development engineer. Tears rolling down my cheeks combined with a smile that can make ventablack shine!
What am I doing now
Well writing this post, obviously 
. Beside that, I am currently very happily employed with AWS working on EC2, but perhaps a bit more info about this in the future.
So that’s me. A young, energized, passionate developer who’s just getting started and although my skills are great, I have a lot to learn!4
Side note, delphi is probably not that bad, but compared to the all mighty Java3 it was like a vegan meal. ↩
Yes, I know Java ain’t all that, but for a teenager it was mind blowing! ↩ ↩2
And although his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he’s ready to save anyone. But I believe Aang can save the world
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