I am Raldin Casidar, a senior software developer today and founder of a corporate company in Cagayan de Oro. I will tell my story on how it all started. When I was in elementary school, I was very keen on gadgets, such as phones and computers. I had no computer before, so we went out to internet cafes with my classmates. I asked permission from my mother to go to the computer shop but I didn’t tell the truth that my actual reason was to play games with my classmates. During my elementary days, I was so into technology, I was very interested in how computers work and I always researched, configured, and explored every setting that a computer had. I even hacked WiFi at our school and let my classmates connect to our school’s private WiFi. I also hacked internet shops to gain unlimited time and eventually, they banned me one by one from each computer shop I went into.
In 6th grade, my mother finally bought me a computer. At that time, I was very good at computers but not really into programming yet. I copied games at internet shops using flash drives and transferred them to my computer to play the games.
One time, my cousin who was an IT college student asked me if he could use my computer to do his school tasks or assignments. He installed a code editor called Sublime. When he was done, he forgot to uninstall the code editor he installed earlier, but he didn’t bother in the first place. So when it was my turn to use the computer, I discovered the app and of course, I was very interested in anything. So I opened the code editor without really knowing what it does and I discovered colored text while I typed. I was so interested why it changed color for every keyword I typed, so I searched the internet on how it worked and that’s how I discovered coding.
I started exploring coding and using the code editor. I started with HTML, CSS, and a very small JavaScript. That’s the only very basic things I knew in coding, but I could code frontend very well but not too pretty of course. When I was in 7th grade in high school, we got a teacher in ICT. He taught us Photoshop. I wanted to show off to my classmates that I was very advanced in computers, so what I did to gain attention was I made a script that automatically changed the wallpaper of all the computers in our laboratory with my name. My teacher caught my attention and saw the computers with my name on their wallpapers. He called me and told me to fix all the computers to go back to their original wallpapers, so I did.
In the next few days, while he was discussing, I was also showing off my knowledge in coding. When he spoke about coding, I also spoke back and corrected him with his terminology. Then that’s the time he caught my attention. He asked me if I knew programming, then I told him yes. He asked me if I had already built a system, I told him yes, I had built a simple social media using PHP.
I even implemented my very own login system with only my own architecture without googling due to limitation of internet that time. He told me to create a CRUD with PHP and MySQL, to test if I really knew programming, and to my surprise, I did it (it was easy btw). So what he did was to separate me from my classmates and he mentored me. He asked me to build real-world systems to be used in our school, so I did.
I was introduced to so many technologies for the first time, and he didn’t actually teach me step by step like spoon-feeding, but he just told me to create this, and I obeyed him. I learned everything the first time it came my way. With struggle, I solved it on my own. He only guided me on what to do but didn’t really spoon-feed me to solve things. That’s how I learned programming. I learned it the hard way and it was actually very steep but I managed to learn everything. Step by step I learned technologies, APIs, dealing with devices in my software, and all. I remember I coded with no internet, so I had only myself to rely on for coding, and not googling things too much. I was very interested and happy to learn on my own way and that’s how I really excelled in programming.
He mentored me until my 12th grade (actually until now, we still keep in touch and talk about programming and stuff, but now, we are more involved with business). He also helped and supported me with our research in grade 12, the idea of our research actually originated from us with my mentor. It was a school attendance system with SMS notification that we proposed to be used in school.
When the pandemic hit, I was forced to find money to sustain myself because I did not have allowance anymore from school since it was only online classes. My mother didn’t support me with my internet spending so I had to find a way. It came to my mind to use my skills to find money, so I did. I posted my skills on the internet and somehow people came up to my direct messages asking me to build or develop their projects, so I did in return for money. That’s how I discovered that my talent or skills had a lot of potential for money.
I faced a lot of first times while I built my clients’ projects. Some clients needed a mobile app but I didn’t have mobile experience yet, but I still trusted my skills and accepted the client and somehow, I managed to get it done. The process repeated until I got a lot of projects to showcase in my portfolio.
When I was in 12th grade, a company’s HR reached out to me to ask for my hourly rate, and they employed me in their company. That was my first time working in a real-world company and I couldn’t believe that I got to work with professionals older than me. I was 18 at that time. I always worked with them humbly and communicated humbly until they promoted me to be their senior dev. I learned so much from working with them, the new technologies and all.
In my college days, I still continued my work to fund my college and now I am managing people, I established a software corporate company and partnered with corporate companies for their software also. I can’t believe how far I’ve come with my skills but I am very thankful for everyone who supported me and guided me, especially my mentor in high school. I will always go back to my mentor who’ve seen my potential and mentored me which results to where I am now. He is really a major part of my story. I believe I am still not at the top, but I know for sure I am far from where I started, and it humbles me up to this day.