Chapter 2: First Steps on the Path
The night after his conversation with Ashish, Aadi couldn’t sleep. He lay on his bed staring at the ceiling fan whirling above him, its slow rhythm mocking the pace of his thoughts. For the first time in months, he wasn’t consumed with the anxiety of rejection emails or the silence of unanswered applications. Instead, his mind spun with the idea of software, this mysterious, vast world Ashish had spoken about.
He thought about the way Ashish had said it: “Nobody knows everything. You just need to take the first step.” Simple words, but they carried a weight that gave Aadi both courage and fear. What if he wasn’t good enough? What if he failed again? And yet, what if he didn’t even try? That thought scared him more.
The next morning, instead of opening yet another job portal, Aadi sat at his desk with a steaming cup of filter coffee. His laptop screen glowed back at him, waiting. His fingers hovered nervously before typing:
“How to start learning software development.”
The results exploded across the screen. Blogs with bold titles: “Become a Developer in 100 Days!” YouTube videos promising mastery of coding. Udemy courses with glowing thumbnails of smiling instructors. Everywhere he looked, someone was offering him a path, except no two paths looked the same.
He clicked on one blog. It told him to learn Python first, then move to machine learning. Another swore that JavaScript was the only place to begin. A third insisted he start with C for “real programmers.” Aadi’s head spun. He had expected clarity, but what he found was noise. Endless, deafening noise.
Closing his laptop, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. “I don’t need more voices,” he muttered. “I need direction.” The words echoed in the quiet of his room. He felt small, standing at the edge of something enormous.
That evening, restless and seeking clarity, Aadi called Ashish again.
“Ashish,” he sighed, “I don’t know what to do. I searched today, and it’s overwhelming. There are too many paths, too many languages, too many courses. Everyone says their way is the best. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Ashish smiled, his tone calm and reassuring. “That’s how everyone feels at first. You’re standing at the gate of a forest, Aadi. You see a hundred trails disappearing into the trees, each with a signboard that says ‘This way.’ It feels impossible, but here’s the thing—you don’t need to know the whole forest right now. You just need to take a peek down a few trails and see which one feels right.”
Aadi nodded slowly, the metaphor resonating. For weeks, he had been staring into the void of uncertainty. Now, at least, there was the idea of trails, of choices, of exploration.
“Look,” Ashish continued, “software isn’t just one thing. It’s made of many worlds. Instead of me throwing jargon at you, why don’t you try this: spend the next week watching some good ‘Day in the Life’ videos. One on a web developer, one on a mobile app developer, one on data science and AI, one on cloud and DevOps, and even one on cybersecurity. Each video will show you what their daily work feels like—not just the buzzwords. That way, you’ll understand the flavor of each path before you choose.”
Aadi wrote down the list hurriedly in the margins of his notebook. His notes looked messy, arrows pointing everywhere, but his heart felt a little lighter. He didn’t need to make a lifelong decision tonight. He just needed to explore.
That evening, he began his exploration.
The first video was about a cybersecurity engineer. He watched a young professional talk about scanning for vulnerabilities, monitoring suspicious activity, patching systems, and working with firewalls. The work looked serious, even heroic in a way—guarding systems like invisible walls protecting a fortress. But the more Aadi watched, the more his brow furrowed. Logs, intrusion detection, compliance frameworks—it all seemed distant to him. He admired the role, but he didn’t feel drawn to it. It was like watching someone else’s story, not his.
The next day, he tried a video on a data scientist. Charts, algorithms, machine learning models—the video showed someone moving from Python notebooks to dashboards, predicting trends from oceans of data. Aadi felt a flicker of curiosity when he heard about AI, but soon it was drowned in complexity. Probability, statistics, neural networks. He respected it, but it seemed too abstract, too heavy. “Not for me,” he whispered to himself, closing the tab.
Then came mobile app development. He saw developers creating apps for Android and iOS—apps that people tap and swipe every day. Aadi’s eyes lit up at first. He thought about all the apps on his phone, from food delivery to maps. But as the video went on, showing the challenges of building for two platforms, debugging layouts, and dealing with app stores, Aadi felt his enthusiasm fade. It felt… limiting. He couldn’t quite explain it, but it didn’t spark the fire inside him.
When he reached cloud and DevOps, the screen filled with dashboards, servers, pipelines, and endless rows of green checkmarks. The engineer in the video smiled proudly, saying, “This is how we keep everything running.” Aadi understood the importance—it was the hidden machinery that powered the digital world. But he found himself yawning halfway through. He needed something more tangible, something he could see, touch, share.
By the end of the week, he had crossed out four trails. Each was valuable, each had its champions, but none felt like home.
And then came the video that changed everything: “A Day in the Life of a Full-Stack Developer.”
The developer on the screen began their day writing code for a website’s frontend, the part users see—the buttons, the layouts, the forms. Then, after lunch, they shifted to the backend, the invisible part that stored data, processed requests, and made everything work. Watching the transition felt like seeing two halves of a puzzle snap together.
Aadi leaned forward. He had always been fascinated by websites—YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Netflix. How did clicking a button instantly show a video? How did millions of people chat, post, and stream without chaos? He had never admitted it out loud, but sometimes, while watching his favorite shows or scrolling endlessly through Twitter, he would wonder: What happens behind the screen? What’s moving all the gears?
Now, the answer was unfolding before him.
The video explained the cycle of a simple web request: a user types in a URL, the frontend sends a request, the backend processes it, talks to a database, and sends a response back to the screen. Simple, elegant, and yet unbelievably powerful.
For the first time, Aadi felt both overwhelmed and deeply curious. He could almost hear his own heartbeat as the developer clicked refresh, and a small piece of code turned into a functioning feature. The mess of lines and symbols transformed into something real—something people could use.
He scribbled furiously in his notebook: Frontend = what users see. Backend = how it works. Database = memory. Full-stack = both.
When the video ended, Aadi sat back in silence. The other trails had felt heavy, distant, or abstract. But this one felt alive. It was like standing in front of a half-built bridge and knowing he wanted to help finish it.
For the first time in months, he didn’t feel trapped by rejection letters or missed opportunities. He felt the pull of curiosity. He wanted to know more.
That night, lying in bed, Aadi whispered to himself: “Maybe this is it. Maybe this is my trail.”
And though the forest ahead was still dark and vast, he felt a spark of light guiding him forward.
The night after his conversation with Ashish, Aadi couldn’t sleep. He lay on his bed staring at the ceiling fan whirling above him, its slow rhythm mocking the pace of his thoughts. For the first time in months, he wasn’t consumed with the anxiety of rejection emails or the silence of unanswered applications. Instead, his mind spun with the idea of software, this mysterious, vast world Ashish had spoken about.
He thought about the way Ashish had said it: “Nobody knows everything. You just need to take the first step.” Simple words, but they carried a weight that gave Aadi both courage and fear. What if he wasn’t good enough? What if he failed again? And yet, what if he didn’t even try? That thought scared him more.
The next morning, instead of opening yet another job portal, Aadi sat at his desk with a steaming cup of filter coffee. His laptop screen glowed back at him, waiting. His fingers hovered nervously before typing:
“How to start learning software development.”
The results exploded across the screen. Blogs with bold titles: “Become a Developer in 100 Days!” YouTube videos promising mastery of coding. Udemy courses with glowing thumbnails of smiling instructors. Everywhere he looked, someone was offering him a path, except no two paths looked the same.
He clicked on one blog. It told him to learn Python first, then move to machine learning. Another swore that JavaScript was the only place to begin. A third insisted he start with C for “real programmers.” Aadi’s head spun. He had expected clarity, but what he found was noise. Endless, deafening noise.
Closing his laptop, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed his temples. “I don’t need more voices,” he muttered. “I need direction.” The words echoed in the quiet of his room. He felt small, standing at the edge of something enormous.
That evening, restless and seeking clarity, Aadi called Ashish again.
“Ashish,” he sighed, “I don’t know what to do. I searched today, and it’s overwhelming. There are too many paths, too many languages, too many courses. Everyone says their way is the best. I don’t even know where to begin.”
Ashish smiled, his tone calm and reassuring. “That’s how everyone feels at first. You’re standing at the gate of a forest, Aadi. You see a hundred trails disappearing into the trees, each with a signboard that says ‘This way.’ It feels impossible, but here’s the thing—you don’t need to know the whole forest right now. You just need to take a peek down a few trails and see which one feels right.”
Aadi nodded slowly, the metaphor resonating. For weeks, he had been staring into the void of uncertainty. Now, at least, there was the idea of trails, of choices, of exploration.
“Look,” Ashish continued, “software isn’t just one thing. It’s made of many worlds. Instead of me throwing jargon at you, why don’t you try this: spend the next week watching some good ‘Day in the Life’ videos. One on a web developer, one on a mobile app developer, one on data science and AI, one on cloud and DevOps, and even one on cybersecurity. Each video will show you what their daily work feels like—not just the buzzwords. That way, you’ll understand the flavor of each path before you choose.”
Aadi wrote down the list hurriedly in the margins of his notebook. His notes looked messy, arrows pointing everywhere, but his heart felt a little lighter. He didn’t need to make a lifelong decision tonight. He just needed to explore.
That evening, he began his exploration.
The first video was about a cybersecurity engineer. He watched a young professional talk about scanning for vulnerabilities, monitoring suspicious activity, patching systems, and working with firewalls. The work looked serious, even heroic in a way—guarding systems like invisible walls protecting a fortress. But the more Aadi watched, the more his brow furrowed. Logs, intrusion detection, compliance frameworks—it all seemed distant to him. He admired the role, but he didn’t feel drawn to it. It was like watching someone else’s story, not his.
The next day, he tried a video on a data scientist. Charts, algorithms, machine learning models—the video showed someone moving from Python notebooks to dashboards, predicting trends from oceans of data. Aadi felt a flicker of curiosity when he heard about AI, but soon it was drowned in complexity. Probability, statistics, neural networks. He respected it, but it seemed too abstract, too heavy. “Not for me,” he whispered to himself, closing the tab.
Then came mobile app development. He saw developers creating apps for Android and iOS—apps that people tap and swipe every day. Aadi’s eyes lit up at first. He thought about all the apps on his phone, from food delivery to maps. But as the video went on, showing the challenges of building for two platforms, debugging layouts, and dealing with app stores, Aadi felt his enthusiasm fade. It felt… limiting. He couldn’t quite explain it, but it didn’t spark the fire inside him.
When he reached cloud and DevOps, the screen filled with dashboards, servers, pipelines, and endless rows of green checkmarks. The engineer in the video smiled proudly, saying, “This is how we keep everything running.” Aadi understood the importance—it was the hidden machinery that powered the digital world. But he found himself yawning halfway through. He needed something more tangible, something he could see, touch, share.
By the end of the week, he had crossed out four trails. Each was valuable, each had its champions, but none felt like home.
And then came the video that changed everything: “A Day in the Life of a Full-Stack Developer.”
The developer on the screen began their day writing code for a website’s frontend, the part users see—the buttons, the layouts, the forms. Then, after lunch, they shifted to the backend, the invisible part that stored data, processed requests, and made everything work. Watching the transition felt like seeing two halves of a puzzle snap together.
Aadi leaned forward. He had always been fascinated by websites—YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Netflix. How did clicking a button instantly show a video? How did millions of people chat, post, and stream without chaos? He had never admitted it out loud, but sometimes, while watching his favorite shows or scrolling endlessly through Twitter, he would wonder: What happens behind the screen? What’s moving all the gears?
Now, the answer was unfolding before him.
The video explained the cycle of a simple web request: a user types in a URL, the frontend sends a request, the backend processes it, talks to a database, and sends a response back to the screen. Simple, elegant, and yet unbelievably powerful.
For the first time, Aadi felt both overwhelmed and deeply curious. He could almost hear his own heartbeat as the developer clicked refresh, and a small piece of code turned into a functioning feature. The mess of lines and symbols transformed into something real—something people could use.
He scribbled furiously in his notebook: Frontend = what users see. Backend = how it works. Database = memory. Full-stack = both.
When the video ended, Aadi sat back in silence. The other trails had felt heavy, distant, or abstract. But this one felt alive. It was like standing in front of a half-built bridge and knowing he wanted to help finish it.
For the first time in months, he didn’t feel trapped by rejection letters or missed opportunities. He felt the pull of curiosity. He wanted to know more.
That night, lying in bed, Aadi whispered to himself: “Maybe this is it. Maybe this is my trail.”
And though the forest ahead was still dark and vast, he felt a spark of light guiding him forward.