Luc Constantin - Former Drug Addict Becomes Programmer After 40

Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Luc Constantin.

Luc Constantin, our guest today, represents so much of what this show is about: there is a path for you in tech. Luc grew up in Romania, one of the poorest of the old Soviet Bloc countries. At 13 years old, Luc dropped out of school. By the time he was 18, he was addicted to drugs and fulfilling his country’s military service obligations. At 21, in his own words, he was finished with the military and had “no hope, no future, no desire to live”. Luc had no idea that he would one day become a programmer or be in the tech space at all.

At 23, Luc decided to go back into the military. From age 29 until 42, he worked in logistics for a packaging and bottling manufacturer in Toledo Spain. At 42, he started learning to code and landed a full time junior web development role by the time he was 43. These days, he’s a front end developer having held down roles for the likes of Gadacons World and Bioclimatic Green Home in Spain. If you think its too late for you to get into coding, be sure to tune in!

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Quotes

“I was one hopeless drug addict in the 90s, I got 4 kids, I’m 43 years old, I live in a foreign country. Of course it’s challenging [to learn how to code], but it can be done!”

“What is the internet? How does it work? What is Google? The way I understood how HTML works is by understanding how a browser works.”

“I was waking up at 4 or 5 AM and for 2 to 3 hours I was coding, learning and studying. Then I would go to my daily job until 3. Coming back, I would eat and have time with my family for 3 and 4 hours. During evening time I was doing the same – coding, learning and programming!”

—Luc Constantin

Key Milestones

Check out Luc’s personal blog about his journey into tech – https://blog.accolades.dev/

Free Code Academy lets you learn how to be a programmer from your home – https://www.freecodecamp.org/

Additional Resources

You can find more resources in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/
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