“I don’t have a very exciting life.”

It’s the first thing Toby Black says when we sit down for Source Code.

But – spoiler – there’s more to it…

So, there’s young Toby, working in Ards, fixing printers. His computers course from tech maybe not enough for much more than fixing printers.  

He literally dreams about becoming a software developer.

“School hadn’t worked for me,” he says, “So I just started teaching myself.”

And, after work each day, Toby would sit at night and get to work.

“I found a few apps to help me self learn, so I started with C++,” he says.

He talks about a group of friends he made while at tech. They made cheats for games like Valorant and Escape from Tarkov. Another, Josh was using Node to create APIs.

“I was really interested in the way they would approach it – I wanted to understand,” he says.

He then moved on to JavaScript and React. Just to be clear – by himself, in his room, after a full day’s work.

Then his mum wrote an email to Cranmore.

He came in for a chat. He did a six-month apprenticeship.  

Now he’s Cranmore’s full stack Swiss Army knife and has been so for nearly three years.

“The idea I had of working as a developer was from YouTube where 90% of your day was in coffee shops,” he says. “But I’m glad it isn’t like that. I love the crunch time of sprints.”

“I was quite intimidated when I came here,” he adds. “Most of the people here have software degrees from Queen’s while I was worried I couldn’t even get into the industry.

“I just knew the only way was to teach myself.”

And that’s what he still does. Every night.

He’s even branched out, gone deep into teaching himself how to generate his own experimental techno music, his PC whirring to process musical textures in the style of underground artists like Lesser Of and SNTS.

“I get fixated on certain things,” he says and talks about learning music-focused coding environments like Strudel, how to granularly modify the frequencies of kicks and hi-hats, being inspired by artists turning the sound of ripping paper into ten-minute atmospheric pieces.

And then he’s teaching himself Next.js, or apps builder Tauri, and he mentions Electron and Rust among myriad other advanced systems.

“I’m a learn by doing person,” he says. “I prefer to dive in at the deep end.”

And that’s what he advises others to do.

“Just start,” he says. “People wait until they are told what to do, or give up because they’re turned away, or are put off because of its complexity.

“There’s no right way to learn it. It’s very personal. You just have to find your preferred method.”

Then he reflects for a moment.

“When you see someone using something you’ve built or when you finally get that API for a text message working… it’s beautiful.” To feel that about your work, to immerse and devote yourself to something you love, that’s more than an exciting life. It’s an inspiring one.