Echoes of the First Click

I still remember the hum of the old desktop in the corner of our living room. It was bulky, slow and covered with a thin layer of dust. To my parents, it was just a tool for checking emails or printing schoolwork. To me, it was a strange, glowing box—intimidating and mysterious.

I was sixteen when I sat in front of that computer with the serious intention of “learning computers.” Up until then, my experience with it had been limited to YouTube, games and occasionally typing out school essays. But that day felt different. I had just signed up for a basic IT course at school and our teacher, Mr. Hanif, had said something that stuck with me:

“Your first click into coding may feel like falling into the deep end. But it’s also the first step into a world where you can build anything.”

At the time, it sounded poetic—maybe even exaggerated. I didn’t really understand what he meant—until I downloaded a simple code editor and opened it up for the first time.

The screen was blank. Just a dark window with a blinking cursor.

I stared at it for what felt like hours. What was I supposed to type? What if I broke something? I opened my school notebook and flipped to the page where we had written down our first lines of code:

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {

cout << "Hello, World!";

return 0;

}

I typed it out, letter by letter, pausing every few seconds to check the syntax. My hands were stiff with hesitation. I didn’t know what would happen if I typed something wrong—would the computer crash? Would it explode? (Spoiler: it didn’t.)

When I finally pressed Run, the screen flashed and then calmly displayed:

Hello, World!

That’s it. No music, no animations, no dramatic effects. But something changed inside me. That line didn’t exist before I typed it. And now, there it was—on the screen, echoing back at me. I had created something.

From that day forward, I started spending more time with that computer. At first, it was painful. My programs failed. I misspelled words. I forgot semicolons. I once spent two hours debugging a file that wouldn’t run—only to realise I had saved it as a .txt instead of .cpp.

But over time, the confusion began to fade. I started looking forward to errors—not because I liked them, but because I finally understood they were part of the learning process. Every error message was like a puzzle piece saying, “You’re close. Try again.”

One weekend, I built a simple calculator in C++. It could add, subtract, multiply, and divide two numbers. I showed it to my little sister, and she asked, “Can it tell me how many days till my birthday?” I laughed—and then wondered if I could make it do that. So, I stayed up learning how to work with dates and time.

Weeks turned into months. I learned how websites are built, how games are made and how databases store information. It felt like opening a door only to find ten more behind it. Each click led to a new room, a new challenge and a new skill.

But what truly surprised me was not just the coding—it was the connection I felt.

I joined online forums where people from all over the world helped each other solve bugs. I made friends at school who also loved building things. I even helped a local shop build a simple inventory tracker using spreadsheets and logic formulas. Me—someone who once thought “coding” was for geniuses—was now helping others understand it.

And it all started with a single, hesitant click.

That tiny sound—almost silent—wasn’t just the start of a program. It was the start of a journey. A journey from confusion to clarity, from fear to curiosity and most of all, from being a passive user to becoming a creator.

Moral of the Story/ Journey:

Every expert was once a beginner. Fear fades when curiosity grows. Sometimes, all it takes to start a life-changing journey is one small, brave step—one single click. Don’t wait to feel ready. Just start.