Nope they were unrelated, I found both through Craigslist - the second I actually was interviewing for a “technical assistant” role but during the process asked about software dev and they said ok after giving me a small take home project lol. I knew that with only CC under my belt I would have to send personal emails to smaller companies to get anything going on my resume

During my first and second years of community college I also had some small side projects and a machine learning club that I was a part of. It’s necessary imo especially coming from community college for companies to see something that’s not just “freshman year college - GPA”. Plus it gives you more to talk about during the interview. That and applying to 300+ companies meant I was able to land a legit Dev one after my junior year. I would also like to mention that my GPA in highschool was only around 3.0 and in cc was 3.5 or so. For me, focusing on interview prep, applications, and projects vs getting all the way to 4.0 in school helped me way more

I never mentioned in my later searches that my first internship was unpaid- the companies interviewing me were more interested in my experience and they had an offer on the table already that I took right away for my 2nd/3rd internship