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Hi! I’m Wilson - a lawyer-turned-software developer.

In my past life, I practiced corporate/commercial law while owning and operating a firm alongside my business partner.

Now, I write software and tinker with my personal projects. My main areas of interest are automation, IoT, edge computing, AI/ML, and embedded systems.

How on Earth did that happen?

Great question.

Tech has been a lifelong interest of mine. I still remember messing around with my family’s Apple Macintosh Classic, trying to learn as much as possible about it.

An old mac
Endless hours were spent playing Shufflepuck Cafe on this thing.

From there, the seed (no pun intended) was planted. I tried teaching myself HTML/CSS in the early days of the internet, then in high school I took courses on Turing as well as Visual Basic. While studying Business Administration in my undergrad, I would still take time to follow online tutorials when I found them. I liked the idea of making things that could do a bunch of other things.

Fast forward a few years, I’m now a full-fledged lawyer, and COVID hits. I’m suddenly working from home and had a ton of extra time on my hands. I picked up a book I’d been working through in my off-time (Python Crash Course) and powered through it. Looking to cut my teeth on something more, I found FreeCodeCamps’ Python course and finished that as well.

At this point I was in a sort of limbo. I felt that I had a good understanding of the core concepts of Python, but I wanted to learn more. I looked at bootcamps, but realized they focused more on front-end development while I wanted a deeper understanding of how computers and software actually worked. Then I looked at part-time/evening courses at colleges and universities, at which point I thought: “If I’m going to go back to school, why do it half-way?”

This was quickly followed by another thought: “Because you work full-time in a career already”.

It wasn’t an easy decision - I don’t know that career changes ever are - but I realized that I would regret it if I didn’t try something that I had a lifelong interest in.

And that pretty much sealed the deal. I charted my exit from the practice of law, started BCIT’s CST program, secured a spot in BCIT’s Co-op program through which I worked as an Embedded Software Engineer at Sierra Wireless, and graduated in December 2023.

Currently, I’m searching for the next opportunity to apply my interest in software development.