People assume I started learning to code because I was curious about technology. Maybe they imagine me watching a YouTube video about programming and thinking — that looks interesting, let me try.
That is not what happened.
I started because I needed a way out. And a way forward.
The real reason
I am a Master Chef. I have spent years in professional kitchens in Japan, managing teams, running services, building standards that other people follow. It is skilled work. It is demanding work. And for a long time, it was enough.
But life has a way of showing you when something needs to change. Financial pressure. A home situation that was getting harder to navigate. The slow realization that having only one skill — one source of income — is not freedom. It is a trap with a comfortable name.
I needed a fallback. Something I could build on the side, grow quietly, and eventually stand on if I had to. Something that was mine.
I chose software engineering.
Why coding specifically
I did not pick coding randomly. I thought about it carefully.
I needed something I could learn alone, without a school or a mentor. Something with real market demand. Something I could do remotely, from anywhere, if my situation changed and I had to relocate. Something that could start as a side income and grow into a full career.
Coding checked every single box.
I also love building things. In the kitchen, there is satisfaction in taking raw ingredients and turning them into something people experience. I felt that same pull when I wrote my first function and watched it do exactly what I told it to do. That feeling did not go away.
What the first months looked like
I will not pretend it was smooth.
I started after long shifts. Late at night when the house was quiet and everyone was asleep. Some nights I had maybe 45 minutes before I could not keep my eyes open. Some weeks I made almost no progress. I questioned whether I was too old, too tired, too behind everyone else who started at 20 in a university with proper teachers and time.
But I kept showing up. Not always for long. Not always productively. Just — showing up.
I started with the basics. HTML, CSS, a little JavaScript. Then React. Then Next.js. I built small things, broke them, fixed them, built them again. I started a real project — an internal management system for my restaurant called VKOS — because I knew that building something real would teach me more than any tutorial ever could.
It did.
Where I am now
VKOS is live. I built it myself, deployed it myself, and it runs on a server I manage. It is not perfect. But it is real, and it works, and I made it.
I am now building shandigital.dev — this site — as my business home. A place for everything I create. Dev tutorials written as I learn them. Fiction and stories. Freelance services for English-speaking businesses who want to reach the Japanese market.
I am not waiting until I am ready. I do not think ready ever arrives. I am building while learning, writing while figuring it out, and moving forward even when it is slow.
Why I am writing this
Because I think there are other people out there who started late. Who are learning between responsibilities. Who do not have a clean story or a straight path.
This blog is for them as much as it is for me.
If you are learning to code after 30, after a career change, after a hard season — you are not behind. You are exactly where you need to be.
Keep showing up.