Hi! I'm Wilson.

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 passion 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 passion and interest in software development.