My Dev Life

My name is Gabriel, and I am a full-stack developer specializing in Laravel and WordPress, with additional experience in Unity. I studied programming for five years from 2017 to 2022, gaining valuable work experience through internships that helped reinforce my knowledge. After completing my studies, I continued working at the same company where I had my last internship for two and a half years, until December 6, 2024. After leaving the last job and some back story After leaving my job for several reasons—primarily personal ones and some job-related issues, particularly regarding objectives and organization—I found myself feeling a bit lost about my next steps. Should I look for a new job, especially a remote one due to my personal circumstances? Or should I return to school to enhance my knowledge? It took me some time to reflect on these options, and I had to reconsider my original motivations for pursuing programming. Throughout my life, I’ve consistently tried to keep up with technology related to computers, especially in hardware and some software areas. This interest led me to develop various skills in building and improving PC setups and making or recommending custom builds, like those featured on my blog. I’ve also diagnosed and repaired many of my friends’ PCs. For them, I’ve done everything for free, and I genuinely enjoy helping them. I do it in my free time with a smile, knowing it brings them happiness, which in turn makes me happy. However, this raises a question: I develop software for a living, but my main interest lies in hardware. So why don’t I pursue it more actively? Honestly, I’m not sure; it feels like a mental block for me. Before studying programming, I did some stuff related to Unity with game creation where I ended up toasting my very old PC. Following that, I focused on improving my hardware skills to prevent similar mishaps. I even attempted to repair the old PC multiple times, but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful at the time. I ended up using my mother’s PC for a while, which ultimately led me to develop the software skills I have today, primarily through watching videos and hands-on experimentation. After finishing the ninth grade, I wanted to try something different for a more practical course which my mother also encouraged me to go for and I enrolled in. During that course, and later at IPLeiria, I developed many software skills, refining them further through internships. In my free time at home, I pursued my interest in hardware, which led me to assist friends and family with tech-related issues. Although I initially enjoyed more the hardware side, I gradually shifted my focus solely to programming especially after I started working on my job, setting my hardware interests aside except for those occasions when I helped someone. Over time, I began to feel that I disliked programming, especially before leaving my old job. I returned to working on some of my hardware interests, and surprisingly, this didn’t change my feelings toward programming, I also started going to the gym again because my health and satisfaction with my body were taking a hit due to the time that I spent only sitting on the chair and not moving at all (my mistake for ignoring this for so long). After leaving my job, I took some time to catch my breath and started taking online courses on “Laracasts”, some blogs, and YouTube channels, learning new stuff has got me pretty excited and especially motivated again like I was not for some time in this past weeks. I also began doing some personal projects like this blog and others featured on gabrielmcs.pt. Through this process, I realized that I always liked programming; it was the lack of motivation, opportunities for learning, and the repetitiveness of my work that led to my earlier dissatisfaction including on myself, the lack the side activities also helped on this. The Plan I know I may have repeated myself a bit in the previous section, but writing isn’t my specialty, I’m working on improving it with this blog, as well as enhancing my speaking skills through the YouTube videos or on social media where I provide explanations or talk about stuff or myself. For now, I plan to focus on my personal projects and work on the skills I’ve wanted to develop for a long time. Afterward, I will decide if I want to start something on my own integrating both hardware and software alongside my personal projects, or if  I should look for a remote job that is challenging enough and also motivates me to learn and grow. At this point, I’m unsure of my next steps, but time will tell. Perhaps I could even start a channel dedicated to Tech on YouTube or teach programming at a school. I hope this helps you gain a better understanding of my current situation without revealing too much of my personal life. There’s still a lot more to share, so please continue following the blog and check out the other projects available on my main hub (gabrielmcs.pt).