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This is my first Android app. I'm notoriously bad at responding to text messages if I don't respond immediately, so I decided to solve my own problem and make sure I never forget to respond again.

One of my early jobs (as I was teaching myself to program) was at a large consulting firm. The job didn't require any sort of programming. Many of the business processes at the company revolved around manual processes and data-entry/manipulation in Excel. After a month, I recognized a process that could easily be completed (more thoroughly and efficiently) by a script. I spent the next few weeks after work learning how to manipulate Excel, scrape data from websites, and package Python scripts as standalone EXEs. I showed my work to one of my colleagues who showed it to others. A few more iterations of this process resulted in my colleagues lining up to see what could be automated out of their processes. My job title hadn't changed, but I was then working full-time as a programmer.

After a while though, when I felt I was no longer learning as much as I'd want to -- I decided to look for a new job in the software industry. With my experience writing code at the consulting firm, I was able to find a decent job at a software company.

tldr: Programming is valuable for many jobs (not just software shops) and it is often easier to get your foot in the door and spend your days writing programs there.

But do you think you did so well early in the term as a result of the deadlines? Perhaps it had no impact, but I'd argue that a lot of people need that requirement to stay on track.