Q: Tell us about yourself

I’m Arthur, and I currently live in Tokyo. I have learned some programming a long time ago. When I was 12, I learned C++ and some other very basic software. When it was time for university, I picked marketing and business as my major. I didn’t really like marketing and business, but it was easy for me. After graduation, I had the opportunity to travel to Japan and ended up staying in Japan.

I have worked in Japan for 5 years and got bored with my job. I tried to start my own company in Japan to help businesses build websites with PHP and other tools. There were a lot of competitions, but I had some customers.

In 2018, I got really sick and stayed a long time in hospitals, so I started programming again during hospital stays. I bought some books online in HTML/CSS because I was interested in web development.

Q: Why did you pick Altcademy?

I decided to commit to learning web development. I tried to learn by myself for a few months, and it was kind of hard. It’s hard to keep your motivations up when you’re self-learning.

I found out about Altcademy and thought the Immersive Path is quite affordable. The program actually teaches you how to build things from scratch. It’s not just “copy and paste”. You also get to learn about the concept of “model–view–controller” with Ruby on Rails, which is cooler to learn in my opinion. Once you understand Rails, you can pick up Node on your own too.

With React and Rails, you can build almost anything, and Altcademy covers both. The Classroom interface is cool, and RemoteCode allows you to do many coding exercises on the browser.

Typically, I split my day into two portions. I spend half a day on Altcademy and the other half trying out different technologies and exploring different things.

Q: What are your goals for the future?

I think that it would be cool to be an IT consultant. Starting next year, I will look into getting a job in this field. I will also be learning more about data structure and algorithms. I am also learning Node, TypeJS, and Vue on the side.