From Real Estate to Ruby: My Journey of Reinvention and Discovery

While writing this post, I was thinking about where to start mentioning Ruby.

It was hard to figure out because, not long ago, I didn’t even know what Ruby or JavaScript were. I didn’t even know what I should be doing with my life next.

Yes, I was quite depressed at that time, but to explain everything better, let’s get back to 2021.

A Career in Real Estate

In 2021, I was working as a Real Estate Agent in Poland. It was my first proper profession in my homeland since I left the country right after college.

The pandemic forced me to come back, but our plan at that time was to apply for a visa to Canada with my wife.

We knew that the process would take some time, so while sorting everything out, I decided to open a business and become an agent. I had always wanted to own a business and work for myself.

Challenges in the Polish Real Estate Market

I enjoyed it, but let’s be honest. The real estate market in Poland is not the easiest one in Europe to work with.

I had customers, houses, and flats for sale, and there was some rotation. Sometimes better, sometimes worse, but I knew that if I kept doing this for a few more years, I would be able to grow that business much more.

Dreams of Moving Abroad

However, I never wanted to live in my country. I always wanted to be somewhere else, and this thought was coming back to me every single day.

I remember when I was around 16 years old, waking up in my family home, looking through the window, and thinking that I had lived here most of my life and the world was too big to spend the rest of my time in the same place.

I think it was the beginning of the discovery part of my soul which I then grow up and I began to travel the world.

A Plan to Move to Canada

Anyway, at that moment, I sent over 800 CVs to various employers in Canada who could give me a visa. There was only one guy from Nova Scotia who responded.

We had a chat for about 10 minutes, after which the connection broke, and I never heard back from him. Nice… My goal started to fall apart.

Relocating to the UK

After a year or so, my friend who lived in the UK told me to come to the UK instead. He was the one with whom I left the country straight after college.

As you can guess, we flew to England. He told me to apply for pre-settled status as I had been living there for almost five years, so I should get it pretty easily. I thought, why not? Let’s do it! It would be a much better idea to become a real estate agent in the UK and start a business there. As I said, I did.

I got a message from the government that my documents had been received and I had full rights to work and live in the UK. Hah! How lucky I am! It was after Brexit, unfortunately, so if I didn’t get it, I would have had to apply for visas and all that…

Facing New Challenges

It wasn’t more than a month, I think, when I had my motorbike and car sold, customers were taken care of by my coworkers from the company I was at, and I was ready to go.

I rented a room in my friend’s house and had to find a job quickly as I was quite short on money. I quickly got a CNC position after I graduated from mechanical college. It was all good; I began saving money for my wife to come so we could rent a flat.

A few months passed, and I began to receive calls from the Home Office asking me for documents that would prove I lived in the UK for five years before. I thought it would be easy!

All I needed to do was find old emails, payslips, and other things and just forward them. But once I started digging for them, it turned out I had lived here only four years and eight months or something very close to that. I was cooked… I didn’t know what to do, and it turned out that my plan was falling apart… again.

A New Beginning in the South

I went to a lawyer who told me that if my decision was refused, I had to apply for another review that would buy me more time. Of course, it happened, I did apply, and because there were thousands of people in a similar situation to mine - I got stuck here for another 2 years.

In the meantime, I moved down to the south where I found a company that could provide me with a working visa if I needed it, but here is where the Ruby story actually begins!

Discovering Programming

I work as a CNC bending machine operator… Every day kind of looks the same. It’s super boring, and I was getting sick of it and wanted to change something, as this was not getting me any closer to my dream of owning a business, and I knew I wouldn’t become a solopreneur by staying here.

Experimenting with AI and Blogging

I decided to experiment with ChatGPT and started two affiliate blogs. The first one taught me a lot about SEO, WordPress, and how to use AI, but a major Google update killed this blog.

So I opened another one, this time on the Polish market, thinking that Google doesn’t check the Polish language so often. As of now, it’s working out. It gets 500 views a month, and I wonder whether to grow this more or sell it. I will see…

If you want to have a look at the other websites I created, there you go:

• LordHomie
• WewnetrznyAzyl

A Visit from an Old Friend

Working on these blogs, especially with AI, felt to me as if I was at work doing a monkey job. It wasn’t what I wanted. I still thought about what to do because I knew I couldn’t stand working on CNC anymore.

A few days later, my friend from Poland called me, saying he would like to come and see me. He is a programmer and doing well. As you might already know, I came up with a brilliant idea.

I will ask him everything about this and will start learning. The more I thought, the more ideas I had, and I saw that programming does not set any borders. You can literally do anything with it.

Starting My Coding Journey

When he came, I spoke to him, and we began looking for great resources for me to learn coding. I stumbled upon a couple of them, all on Udemy.

After a little research, I picked one and was happy and excited to get this going. It was JavaScript, of course. I was learning every single day, little by little, until I got to classes, and then I had another look at the course resources.

Finding the Right Learning Path

It seemed to me that I was going quite fast and would finish the course in probably 1-2 months, but I still hadn’t even done one project, and I didn’t even have a clue how to make one!

I knew it wasn’t a good way to learn, and from the experience I had from learning other things, I felt it was going to end up as tutorial hell.

Discovering The Odin Project

I quickly began to search for something else and found The Odin Project, which was recommended everywhere. It promised me to think as a programmer, sort out any problem on my own, build any project I wish, and be able to apply for junior dev jobs with all that knowledge.

I thought that if it takes even 1 year or more for people to finish it, then it might be true. I gave it a go, and so far, I am not disappointed.

Choosing Ruby

Ok, but WHAT ABOUT RUBY?! While going through The Odin Project Foundations, I was thinking about which path I wanted to follow afterward: JavaScript or Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

I read a lot and watched a lot of videos about it, and of course, I found a lot of articles that said Ruby is dead, nobody is hiring, it’s old and not good anymore, yada yada yada.

I have always liked to be different and do things the opposite way for many people. Moreover, the idea of making an MVP fast with Ruby excited me as I could imagine myself doing more advanced projects than my previous WordPress blogs in probably less time with a higher success rate. All these were enough to make me choose it.

If it’s the language that I can use to push my MVPs as fast as possible and see which one grabs people’s attention - then I am in!

Thank you for reading my story! If you enjoyed this article and want to follow my journey as I continue to learn and grow in programming, follow me on Twitter @CodeByBlazej. I share updates, tips, and insights that you won’t want to miss. See you there!