How it all started
What drew my attention to tech as funny as it may sound was movies. Growing up I watched a lot of sci-fi movies which made me curious about possibilities. Whether reading novels or watching movies, fiction always catch my attention before any other genre. Fiction always gives room for imagination which is one of my favorite things about being human because most technological advancements we've made today all started as someone's imagination.
At the first on entering the tech world, I wasn't certain of what I wanted and didn't bother making research. All I knew is I was in love with technology. So I thought to myself "why don't you become a hacker?", it took me a while to realize a lot that goes into becoming anything.
Journey so far
I wrote my first line of code in 2019 and nothing compares to the feeling I had when that simple code was displayed on my browser even though all it read was just a ''hello world''. Ever since I have been trying to improve on my programming skills. I faced some of the challenges most programmers in Nigeria experience which include:
- Inconsistent power supply
- High cost of internet
- Society thinks you're an internet fraudster for being glued to your pc
- Family thinking I'm wasting my time and looking for an excuse to not participate in chores
The first two was a big challenge for me because most times I only had one of either, when there was power supply there was no internet data and when there was internet data there was no power supply (which by the way was only at night, because midnight subscription was the cheapest plan I could afford). 2020 was the year I did the most in programming. Learning was all I did during the pandemic. I went online picked beautiful sites I could find and cloned them using HTML, CSS and javaScript, I downloaded youtube tutorials with projects and also tried to replicate the projects and built myself a portfolio during the time. I also got involved in a boot camp with Megathingo and when it ended I got to work with them for a few weeks which meant a great deal to me. Afterward, I was going to start learning react.js then I got stuck, for some reason my pc just wouldn't work with react. I was trying to get it to work when I gained admission to a tertiary institution. Being from an average home, my folks who assumed always being in front of a pc was a waste of time started buzzing in my ears about getting a day job to support myself when leaving for school so I had to pause the process for a while.
Before going in all I could think of was ways to balance programming and my education without lagging on any but when I got into school it was a totally different world to deal with. I was told the best time to gather your grades is during the first year so I was so busy trying to get my grades together that I almost forgot how much joy I got typing on a dark screen(yes all my apps are on dark mode in case you were wondering) and then seeing it come to life when I run it. During this time I met a few people who shared the same ideologies as me(grateful to have met them) and through one of them, I was lucky enough to have been introduced to hashnode.com/@dabsclement who included me in a mentorship program called NerdsVille which I believe is going to push me in sharpening my skills programming as to become better.
Goals for 2022
A few goals I want to meet in 2022 are:
- Participate in #100DaysOfCode
- Sharpen my HTML, CSS and javaScript skills
- Learn react.js
- Read more books
- Improve my soft skills
pssst--- off record. This has to be the hardest thing I've done my entire life.. writing is reeeeally hard