From B.Ed Student to Self-Taught Developer: My Path Into Tech While Training to Teach

When I enrolled in the Bachelor of Education (Science) programme at the University of Embu, specialising in Computer Science and Mathematics, I expected the two subjects to stay fairly separate — one preparing me to teach mathematics well, the other giving me a theoretical grounding in computing. What I didn't expect was how quickly they'd start blending into a single, ongoing project: actually building things.

This is the honest version of how that happened — not a tidy "I always knew I wanted to code" story, but the more realistic version, where curiosity, a genuine need, and a fair amount of trial and error pushed things forward.

The starting itch: wanting to make things, not just study them

Computer Science as a B.Ed specialisation is, understandably, weighted toward pedagogy — how to teach computing concepts clearly, how learners build understanding, how to assess it. All necessary, all useful. But studying how to teach something and actually building something with your own hands scratch very different itches. I found myself wanting the second one badly enough that I started teaching myself HTML, CSS, and JavaScript outside of coursework, with no specific plan beyond "I want to see if I can make a real website."

That contrast turned out to matter a lot. In education, you can explain a concept reasonably well and still get partial credit for the attempt. In code, a misplaced character either works or it doesn't. There's no partial credit for "the website mostly loads." That immediate, binary feedback was addictive in a way lecture-based learning rarely is.

The rough early stretch

It would be dishonest to skip over how disorienting the beginning was. Self-teaching frontend development with no formal coding background meant a lot of time spent confused by things that seem obvious in hindsight — why a stylesheet wasn't applying, why a layout broke on a different screen size, why a script that worked fine inline suddenly failed once moved to an external file.

None of that confusion was unique or special — it's the standard experience of learning to code without a structured course guiding each step. What helped most wasn't any single resource, but a habit: building real, complete small projects rather than only following along with tutorials. A tutorial teaches you to follow instructions. A real project — even a small, rough one — teaches you to debug, which is the actual skill.

How the two paths started reinforcing each other

The shift happened gradually rather than as one dramatic realisation. A few specific moments stand out:

What I'd tell someone earlier in this same position

• You don't need to choose between "education person" and "tech person." The framing itself is the trap. Teaching well and building well draw on overlapping skills — clarity, structure, patience with debugging (whether that's a student's misconception or a broken script).
• Build something real before you feel ready. Waiting to "know enough" before starting a real project is a trap that delays the actual learning, which mostly happens through building, not before it.
• Let your two interests actually talk to each other. CBC Best and Ronny Best Math exist specifically because teaching experience revealed a real need that web development skills could answer. Neither interest had to wait for the other to "finish" first.

Where this is heading

The B.Ed Science degree continues at the University of Embu, and the development side continues to grow alongside it — most recently into full-stack work with RonnyBank. Neither path has overtaken the other; if anything, they keep handing each other new problems worth solving. A maths education background gives a clearer sense of what actually helps a learner. A growing development skill set gives the means to build that help into something real, freely accessible, and available to far more students than a single classroom ever could reach.