My first role as a front-end developer mainly involved building static landing pages with HTML, CSS, and jQuery. JavaScript was mostly an afterthought. JS was something that I would copy and paste snippets of if I ever needed to use it.
Fast forward two years and I was at a crossroads in my career. I was not passionate about building static pages. But I was eager to continue learning. I just didn't know what. Fortunately, my company had a training budget and I was able to go to ConFoo, a developer conference in Montreal. This was a career-changing event for me. When I saw all of the projects and talks showcasing what people were doing with JavaScript, it was an eye-opening moment.
As soon as I got back from that conference, I immediately shifted my focus to JavaScript. I made a decision that I was going to be a JavaScript developer. That was the real beginning of my journey. I started learning the basics and trying to put them into practice in my day to day work. In the evenings and weekends, I concentrated on learning the new hot framework, AngularJS. Eventually, my desire to learn more led me to find a new job as a JavaScript consultant. I was finally able to build JavaScript applications as my full-time job. After a year, the same itch to learn more led me to move to a startup, where I was able to focus on building with React, Redux and Node.js. In more recent years I have worked for clients through my consulting business (StackFive.io), where I get to help businesses solve interesting problems utilizing my skills in JavaScript.
I've continued to learn and grow as a developer, implementing my learnings on projects like Viyo.io and ReactLibraries.com. But I will always center my focus around JavaScript. It has been the catalyst for my career and the thing that first made me fall in love with web development.