Hello everyone, I'm Programmer Wanfeng.

Today not talking about technology, want to share with you how I, a law student who almost went to work at a law firm, became a programmer with 300,000 fans online step by step.

My Experience, Maybe Similar to Yours

2014, undergraduate graduation, major was Electronic Information.

2016, postgraduate entrance exam, major was Intellectual Property.

Sounds smooth, right?

But only I knew, every time I passed by the computer science lab, watching those classmates writing code, how envious I felt inside.

At that time I was already 22 years old, starting to learn programming from scratch? People around me said: Are you crazy?

Trigger for Career Change: A 3000 Yuan Monthly Salary Offer

After graduate school, I received an offer from a law firm.

Monthly salary 3000 yuan.

In Chongqing.

You know what I felt like at that time?

I studied for nearly 20 years, and the result is 3000 yuan monthly salary.

That night, I sat alone in my rental room, flipping through my resume several times, and discovered an awkward fact:

Except for "good at exams", I seemed to know nothing.

Turning Point: Python Changed My Life Path

Around 2017, I accidentally saw an article online about someone who wrote a small script with Python that could earn an extra 2000 yuan per month.

2000 yuan.

Not much, but for me, it was a direction.

If a person who completely doesn't know programming, spends 3 months learning Python, can earn 2000 yuan extra per month, is this thing worth seriously learning?

That's what I thought at the time.

So I bought my first Python book. "Python Programming: From Beginner to Practice", I read it 3 times.

More Pitfalls Than You Can Imagine

In the first half year of learning Python, I stepped on countless pits:

  • Couldn't install environment, struggled for 3 days
  • couldn't remember syntax, needed to check documentation even for writing a loop
  • didn't know what projects to make, felt everything was too difficult
  • wanted to give up more than 5 times

But one thing saved me.

I started using Python to solve actual problems in my work.

For example:

  • Used Python to batch process Word documents (formatting adjustments when I wrote my thesis were too painful)
  • Used Python to crawl court announcements, helping me find data for my thesis
  • Used Python to auto-generate Excel reports, saving a lot of repetitive work

Every time I solved a problem, I gained a bit more confidence.

Real Turning Point: Open Source Project Changed Everything

In 2021, I made a decision: organize the office automation code I used daily into a library, open source it on GitHub.

This became python-office, a Python library for "one line of code to handle office automation".

My motivation at the time was simple:

During my Python learning journey, I used too many open source codes from predecessors, now it's my turn to give back to the community.

Unexpectedly, this project completely changed my life trajectory.

  • GitHub Stars from 0 to 1000+
  • npm downloads exceeded 360,000+
  • 300,000 fans online
  • Through this project, achieved transition from employee to freelancer

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