I started my career as a Mainframe Developer in Wipro Technologies as a Wasian in India. Wipro Academy of Software Excellence (WASE), is a unique program launched by Wipro. It offers BCA & B.Sc. students a chance to pursue higher education – M. Tech in Software Engineering in collaboration with BITS Pilani while gaining work experience.
As Wipro is a Service based company so they train new Hires based on their Client needs. We were a batch of 200 which was split into two for training, One batch was moved into Java and another one into Mainframe. I was part of the second batch and I picked up Mainframe pretty quickly. IBM Mainframe is not as easy as Python or any other OOP languages that we have today. We used to write our own compiler to compile our code. Wipro gave me an opportunity that I thought was not possible. Companies used to hire only Engineers with CS degrees which I did not have.
After completing my Mainframe Training I was waiting for Project allocation. All the candidates in the Java batch were quickly allocated in a Project and our batch was still struggling to find Projects. After 2 months, I got an email from the project allocation team stating they have a position. I accepted the offer and now finally I had my own workstation, Cubicle with my own Phone extension. I was so excited to have my own Cubcile and phone, after every 30 minutes I was calling my friend asking what's up man? Enjoying :)
It was a Honeymoon period but it came to an end soon. After a couple of months working in Mainframe, I realized this is not something I want to do because I was seeing my friends building cool things with Python, Java, etc.
But, the defense mechanism of my mind did not allow me to come out of my comfort zone and learn something new. It took me 5 years to come out of my comfort zone and start learning something new.
I invested in Bitcoin and other currencies in 2017 and heard a lot about Blockchain. I started digging into this technology and started learning about it. After a couple of months, I was offered an opportunity in our USA office. I did not want to leave it so I started preparing my paperwork and I came to USA in 2018. It was a new team so I had to learn the complete Application Architecture and all the Upstream and Downstream systems and it took a couple of months for me to adjust.
In 2019, Covid started and all the employees were asked to work from home. I thought it's a matter of a couple of days then I have to resume my office again. Days, weeks, and months passed and we were still working from Home. In April 2021, I decided to do something productive and decided to resume my Blockchain learning. It's not an easy task for a Mainframe developer to become a Blockchain Developer because I had no experience in any OOP language so I decided to learn Python. Within 2 weeks I got my python basic straight.
Now, It was time to start learning about Blockchain. I watched many youtube videos, read 100's of articles on Blockchain but the information was scattered all over the web. I decided to enroll in Blockchain courses but I didn't get what I wanted. I wanted to learn how to Implement Bitcoin Blockchain from Scratch.
I spent months and finally, I started understanding technical jargon used in Bitcoin and Blockchain. I asked questions on Stackoverflow and in many other forums and finally, I got everything that I was looking for. It took me 6 months to gather all the information I was looking for. Everything is available on the internet but it's scattered and because of that many people give up on learning something new.
Now, it was time to implement my Blockchain Knowledge and create my own version of Bitcoin. I started coding Blockchain by creating all the core Bitcoin components from Scratch and along the way, I polished my python skills as well. Projects are the best way to learn any new language. Basics alone won't help you get a job.
I Implemented all the required Bitcoin Blockchain components from Scratch
Own Elliptic Curve Library
Bitcoin Transaction Creation from Scratch
Memory Pool
Transaction Creation
Transactions Broadcasting
Transaction Signing
Transaction Validation by Mining Nodes
Proof of Work Algorithm
Peer-Peer Network
Broadcasting Block Between Nodes
Autonomous Conflict Resolution b/w Nodes
Until this stage, my Blockchain was fully functional but something was missing. I decided to create a Frontend for my application so I learned a little bit of HTML, CSS, and Flask Framework and managed to create a beautiful Frontend. Frontend implementation put life into my application.
Now I had to create all the pages needed to fetch the data from Blockchain and display it on Frontend so I implemented the functionality to read and write the data from the frontend and now Blockchain was fully functional.
My Struggle with learning Blockchain motivated me to start my own Educational website Codies Alert so that others can start their Blockchain Journey effortlessly. I have also created a FREE Beginner Guide for Blockchain Course with a Certificate of Completion. Currently, I am working on an advanced Blockchain Course in which you'll learn how to Create Bitcoin Blockchain from Scratch.
My plan is to provide Blockchain and Web3 Knowledge at Codies Alert so that it is easy to find all the resources in one place. If you want to contribute, please free to contact me.
That was my journey from Mainframe to Blockchain Developer and I hope these resources will help you start yours. How did you start with Blockchain? Share your Journey in the comments below, I would love to hear about it.
If you have any questions, you can connect with me on Twitter, I would be happy to help. Share this article with your friends if you think it can motivate others to come out of their Comfort zone and pursue their dreams.