My Tech Journey-The Journey So Far
Once upon a time….., Nah we are not doing that here today jeez.
Well it all started one afternoon on a good day which the dates I know not of but that day set the current course of my life today, I was jobless as usual and said I should go to my neighbor's house (I wanted to play 🤷♂️) but something happened I met my friends older brother who was in FUTO (Federal University of Technology Owerri) as at that time (he is currently married and a tech consultant at KPMG today), he showed me basic web development (Like a live coding session) he made a mini calculator.
I was wowed and in my heart, I was like yeah I want to do this, well as that time there wasn’t a PC(at least a useful one) in the house as at this time so I would just go to him to see cool stuff he was doing and try to remember the HTML code I saw, the one I liked most that time was marquee because it made text move around the screen, I didn’t know about the CSS and Javascript running the whole show in the background.
Then in school we were introduced to Data Processing which was more of practical computer science and boy was MS Access a ton of fun it felt a bit like programming because we told the system how to behave (partially) but as at this time I was still playing with HTML (had idea of CSS and Js) but felt I should learn HTML first then move up like that. Skip to when I had finished my SSCE in 2016 and was jobless at home so I got a textbook of 1000 pages plus and then I started reading about HTML then CSS then Javascript when I wrote a code that almost destroyed my mum’s laptop the laptop was literally freezing(what it’s not my fault that I didn’t really understand how types work then “I was trying to add a string to an int”).
Then I quit the whole stuff(had no idea there was something like StackOverflow) so I heard of hacking and then the whole “Edward Snowden” so I was like this is my niche, then I started googling what I need to know to become a hacker and everyone on Quora was like “Python” and I was like yeah let’s do that then I found the New Boston on youtube and tried finishing the video but I never did but I learned stuff.
Admission came through and it was time for me to go to school (pre-degree) so I left for that and for the next 8-months I was not writing any form of code then and then I wrote my second JAMB, Then got admitted to UNN to do electronic engineering so I went to school again another 8 months without writing a single line of code. It was holiday time and I decided to visit my aunt for the holiday and her husband was really nice to me he gave me his laptop and access to his Wi-Fi so I found an HTML, CSS, Javascript and JQuery tutorial on youtube I took the course and did a mini project which I later deleted (my aunt’s husband said I should not leave them on his laptop and I knew of git but didn’t know what it was used for 🤷♂️😂😂), this time I pressured my parents to get me a laptop and they did so I went back to school then I learnt about bootstrap, materialize CSS then I started learning Django(mind you when I say learned I mean I watched a video and did the mini-project alongside the tutor never did a project of mine😂😂😂) all this I learned because I also read that to be a good hacker you need to understand how technologies worked in the background.
So, I met a guy in class he was wearing a DSC shirt and I asked how can I join and he told me later that day I was in the group and few weeks later I saw a Google Scholarship advert on the group and applied for Mobile app development and then I got into the program and I followed it up seriously which had it’s ups and downs I remember the first day after multiple trial and error my first activity ran (I ran round thee hostel shouting “Yes, I don make am”), then there was a day I used 9GB to resolve a gradle issue all to no avail I started crying and my roommates consoled me and one even volunteered to buy me data and after that day I took a gradle course and understood it since then I have not had an issue that serious, I continued with the scholarship program to the first project phase and qualified for phase 2 then I attended the final meetup for phase 1 and there was a hackathon and I won (I was like wow dude seriously) well was all good (thank you youtube people, that award was you guys effort 😂😂😂😂😂). Down the line I heard of HNG which I did to stage 5 before I was kicked out of camp(God no go shame us).
Then at a DSC meetup I started hearing of Flutter I was like I need to try this one out and eventually I did, Flutter was really great (even as at this time I still understood little about programming) though I had hiccups like I didn’t know much so I continued pushing learnt the ropes of how things worked and I continued with Flutter and then started learning how to do several things in Flutter, then I gave my first talk ever at a Flutter event I talked on “making API calls” (wow you should have seen me the nervousness showed outside too, yeah I was sweating profusely after the talk).
Today I have gained some level of experience and also of confidence as a person (even though the imposter syndrome is still a thing within me). I have also being able to show someone how to do something in Flutter(he is like a senior Android developer) he remarked that “I made him like Flutter, if not he’d written it off” and like that every day I keep growing(I now understand OOP which I did not understand before, trust me it sounded like foreign languages when I first heard of it 😂😂😂).
Now I look forward to expanding my knowledge base (as the dream of being a hacker is still very much alive) so I’d understand how the backend really works and that is why I have chosen to intern so I could connect with more people, I may have not mentioned so many people but yeah there are so many people to mention (trust me they are much) and I have really grown from seeing what they do or things they tell me of or just what the might have taken their time to teach me.
I am really grateful for the community and the people in it, my family for seeing me and supporting me up to date (even though they still don’t get it😂😂😂) for some reason I can’t still clearly explain it to them but their support is really great, I am also grateful to God (yes I believe that he has a hand in so many of these things). I look forward to the things I would learn during the course of the internship and I am sure it would call for an awesome article in the end(if all goes well😉😉😉). Thank you for your time folks.
