Dev Retro 2022: My Journey into Tech.

Dev Retro 2022: My Journey into Tech.

2019 - 2022

When I first heard about this campaign going in the Hashnode space, via an email, I didn’t really take it seriously until I got another email from Hashnode with links to articles written by participants.

It’s safe to say that I was blown away, particularly by Amena’s article. Her article, and those of many others I read, challenged me to join the campaign.

How My Interest in Tech Began.

I’d have to say that I’d kind of always been interested in the idea of using computers to make cool things. I guess this interest came from when I first saw Big Hero 6. But back then, I was little, and didn’t really think too much into it.

The next time my interest in tech was aroused was in a particular computer science class back when I was in JSS3 and was thirteen. My teacher was talking to us about careers in computer science, and when he explained ‘computer programmer’, I was intrigued. It was right there in the class, in front of all my classmates that I took the decision to be a programmer.

From there, I took up A LOT of research. I began to find out more about who a computer programmer is, and from there, I encountered other professions like ‘software engineer’ and ‘software developer’. The similarity between the three careers confused me for a long time, and I almost wasn’t sure which of them I wanted to be. But, thankfully, I had my computer science teacher, and my uncle to go to with my questions.

I answered, “Computer programmer,” for about a year whenever someone asked me what I wanted to become. But in my SS2, when I was fifteen, my understanding became a lot better, and I then decided to be a ‘software engineer’.

The Steps I Took.

2019-2020.

I was lucky, back then in my JSS3, that sometime after I took my decision to go into tech, we were to embark on our two-month+ break after our Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) by June, as we have in Nigeria, where I’m from. And I promised myself to use that break to get started in coding.

Using my mom’s Compaq that she (luckily) wasn’t using that much anymore, I took to Google to begin searching for resources I could use to start learning. I signed up to a lot of sites in my determined spur: Hackerank, Code.org, Codementor, edX, and even Girls Who Code. The funny thing is that I either found the courses on such sites boring, or I just found them too challenging.

I remember using my mom’s phone one day, still searching for resources, when I found Sololearn. I quickly went on to the site, signed up, and downloaded the app.

I told my mom about it, and since the app was on her phone (I didn’t have one of my own) she said we’d see how we could share it.

The first course I took was in Python, because I think I read somewhere that Python was the best language for beginners. I remember the day I told my mom I was learning Python. She thought I meant the snake! 🤣

I was really happy about the progress I was making then, because I was on my way to becoming a programmer.

The Challenge.

I think the first problem I encountered was when my mom stopped allowing me use her phone so often. It really slowed me down, and made me get lazy in taking my lessons. And at a point, I didn’t even realise when I no longer even asked her for her phone. And it was this that made do nothing on coding for more than half of the next year (2020).

But I was lucky enough to have a friend in my church who was also into coding. And at a point in 2020, he began to help me out. He was a real motivation for me, because he was just my age and he had already made this really cool website. He may not have known it, but he challenged me to keep going. I got some of coding resources and videos from him, and he even sent me some codes of his I could manipulate!

From there I began my own research again. I looked up some more sites and continued to get insights and resources from the friend of mine.

2021.

It was when I entered SS2, and we had to choose our disciplines: science or art, that my school workload became so much that I had to drop coding for some time. I couldn’t afford to fail.

My pause lasted till, I don’t know, about early 2021, sometime in February or so. I forsook Python and took to web development, because I saw it as a much easier choice. Back then, I used to watch YouTube web development tutorial videos from FreeCodeCamp, Traversy Media, Giraffe Academy, and from some other channels, and would then recreate the sites they made on my own PC. I dedicated my weekends to coding, and my weekdays to schoolwork, as advised my uncle.

The Challenge.

But then I experienced a huge setback. My mom’s old Compaq that I’d been using for the three years I’d been into coding crashed, and at the moment, my parents weren’t able to fix it or get me a new one.

At this point, I thank God for my uncle, who had been there supporting me from the beginning. He pushed me to ask for help from my aunt staying abroad, and some months later, by May, I got my really nice HP!

The Comeback.

Well, all the ready help I received from my family members in a time when I felt like it was all over further drove me to keep going.

I went back to Girls Who Code and began actively following them. I even tried to sign up for that year’s Summer Immersion Program, but missed it because I didn’t check my email often. That notwithstanding, I kept going.

I realized that it would make me more focused if I had a dream project that I wanted to build, and so, I thought of making a social media app for Nigerian teen girls. When I told my uncle about it, he told me that although it would be VERY HARD to make such an app, I could go ahead if I thought I could take it on. I decided to continue with the project.

I read a lot about making a social media app, took scores of notes, and even began drawing the app designs on paper (because I didn’t know how to do it any other way). I then went to YouTube for tutorial videos. I watched and found out about SQL, server-side, PHP, JavaScript, and MAAAAN was I overwhelmed! 😓

I saw that making an app all by myself with my very little knowledge would be too hard. And so after learning the difference in ‘websites’ and ‘web apps’, I decided to just start by making a website for my would-be app, which I did using HTML and CSS.

And when I saw I couldn’t make my site as pretty as I wanted with my level of knowledge, I started a blog around my vision for the social media app, designing the best I could in line with my dream site design.

Well, I can’t say I did much in the rest of 2021, only that towards the end of the year, I went back to learning Python because I felt challenged when one of my two church friends who were into coding told me he was now a ‘Pythonista’.

Have me his Udemy course videos to learn with. I was serious with it for the first month of learning or so. But from there, my consistency in it and in coding in general was, as one might say: on-and-off.

2022.

2022 has been my most productive year so far in my ENTIRE LIFE, I daresay. Even though, aside from schoolwork, I didn’t begin it with going back to coding – I rather concentrated on my blog – I’m surely ending it with visible steps towards being a better programmer.

This year, I graduated from secondary school in July, and when I got my own Android phone two months later, I decided that there was no longer anything stopping me from learning at the best pace.

I downloaded the Sololearn app, and started a course in Web Development Fundamentals. I also joined groups for people in tech on Facebook.

It’s only been two months since I took up coding again, and it’s been great. The Sololearn learning environment with the Code Challenges, Leaderboard, and badges have really been pushing me to meet up with my peers in tech.

And through the Facebook group I joined, Young People Doing Big Things, I’ve been able to connect with other Nigerian teens and young people in tech – one of the things I’ve always wanted to do since I started this journey.

The Girls Who Code weekly newsletter has also been an amazing source of inspiration to me. In fact, I took part in the Girls Who Code Girls movement by Girls Who Code, where us girls had the opportunity to create our own game characters. I shared my results on my Facebook and got a handful of acclaims from friends and family.

My endeavours as a writer have as well helped me. If it wasn’t for a 28-day writing challenge I took part in, in November this year, I wouldn’t have learned so much about intentionality, and wouldn’t have connected with so many inspiring and helpful people.

The Major Challenges I Experienced.

My Resources.

Back when I started in 2019, other than Sololearn, I had no other place to learn in a way that would be interesting and understandable.

And when I did find resources: YouTube videos, some e-books my uncle sent me, and a few articles, I got stranded at a point because they all taught on a particular language or project. I didn’t know how to use what I had learned to create the project I had in mind. The Girls Who Code weekly Code at Home projects I took up in 2020, helped a little. But for every project, they only gave a brief overview on how it would be done, with nothing in-depth. And what’s worse was that they often introduced a new project every week.

My Connections.

Throughout my coding journey, my major problem had always been that I was alone. I didn’t really have anyone else to ask questions other than my uncle, my two church friends, and Google. And most times, their knowledge of what I wanted to know was limited – and Google was making things worse by bombarding me with articles.

And this problem was made worse by the fact that I didn’t have a smartphone till I graduated secondary school. Due to the network issues in my area that arose at a point, browsing with a laptop was so slow. And it really reduced my pace.

When I began working on my social media app in 2021, I took to Facebook to look for groups I could join, so I could meet people and have my questions answered. But as fate would have it, all my efforts to reach out in that year fell through, except this page I found towards the year’s ending: Rubies Technologies; I was fortunate to watch a conference they hosted that year.

I may not have gone far, when compared with people who might have started this journey at the same time I did, but I know that this time around, because I have the right kind of people around me, I’m going to follow through with my goals. I have another project in mind, an app that’ll work to scan users’ bodies and produce a result (being confidential here), and I’m giving myself next year to create it.

My best and only advice to programmers and beginner peeps in tech is to always reach out to find like-minded people. If you have a smartphone, even better. Social media – twitter, I’ve realized – is buzzing with people sharing their projects and looking for people to help out. Never think you can do it alone.

Thanks for reading! 🤗