DEV Community: Brian Gitego

Another Awesome Week

Brian Gitego — Sun, 25 Apr 2021 17:42:45 +0000

Hello again from the taskforce.

So today marks the end of the week before the last in the TaskForce program. This week has been as always very educational as I'm always learning something new.

We kicked it off with the feedback session which was helpful to me mainly in regards to my blog writing skills. It helped me think about more attention to the details and the reader's perspective so that was a win right there. I'm applying it to this blog right now.

One other major highlight of the week was the client presentation, which was as I talked about in the last post, about being able to change the logo for a specific page only in wordpress. My teammate and I managed to come up with a solution even though it wasn't "the" solution. And we got some helpful feedback and pointers from the client's IT Lead on ways we can improve it even better and that was cool.

Also, currently we just started working on our graduation project and as always it brings new concepts and challenges which we are ready to tackle head on. It's a cool social media type app with tons of cool features which I for one am excited to see when we get them working and one more thing is that this may very well be my first app on the app store so that's cool too.

Finally we closed the week off with the old fashioned Friday presentation. I say this because if you read my previous posts, we do this almost every Friday. It's a fun way to make our minds focus on something else that isn't development related for a while. This week we did what I would call CHARADES WITH ALIENS. Basically what 3 symbols we'd use to describe Awesomity Lab and Code of Africa if we had to describe them to aliens who didn't read or speak our language.

So, long story short, that was this last week. It was packed with new and interesting things, most of which I couldn't mention for the sake of the length of this post but it was another awesome week.

Wordpress

Brian Gitego — Sun, 18 Apr 2021 12:03:36 +0000

We're nearing the end of the Task Force and we're as enthusiastic as we were the first week.

Personally, this week has been especially challenging for me as my teammate and I had a wordpress task that tested and is still testing my skills.

Basically what we had to do was make it so that the client could be able to change logos on different pages specifically without affecting other pages. At first we used a plugin called Logo or Image replace by mycore.global. What this plugin does is add a meta box on a page with two fields, one for the the src for an image on the page, and another for the src of an image to replace that. This worked kinda good enough for the time but it had a flaw which was that the replacement process was done by client javascript and hence happened after the page was rendered. The problem this creates is that when the page loads, for a split second you can see the original logo before it is replaced, depending on a person's connection, this can go up for multiple seconds if the loading is slow.

Another problem is too much plugins are not a best practice in wordpress as they can cause maintenance, copyright and version compatibility issues. I have since used my own custom implementation which is an improvement to the plugin but there was still the issue of rendering.

The solution for this is, theoretically, to make it so that the replacement happens before the page is rendered. I have tried to achieve this by trying to add a filter after the user has entered the replacing logo image address which will replace the logo before the page loads but so far it's not working for some reason. If anyone has any ideas you can reach out in the comments and here is the link to my question on Stack Overflow..

So, this week was generally about that task and we are currently working to implement it better according to the client's feedback. Let's hope it works eventually.

Stress-free Agile Development

Brian Gitego — Sat, 10 Apr 2021 12:25:48 +0000

Week Six down!
Here's to another successful week done at the Task Force.

This past week was a code-less week unlike most of the previous ones, instead we learned more of the supplementary skills and tools we need as developers to succeed.

Agile Development

The first thing I got from this week is a deeper understanding of project development, specifically the Agile project development process. The agile development process focuses on delivering a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to the client as soon as possible. This means delivering the product in smaller parts which provide a certain amount of value to the client to keep them motivated and happy because of the progress that they see. This is different from the waterfall model where the product is built in a way that it able to provide value only if it is finished (i.e there is a linear sequence of steps and once a step has been gone through there is no going back until all steps are finished).

Resilience and Stress Management

Something else I learned (and this is essential) is more about Resilience and Stress Management. Simply resilience is the ability of one to recover/deal with difficult situations. This is therefore necessary to deal with stress. Different people deal with stress in different ways, some healthy and others not, some effective and others not but the key to being able to deal with stress is knowing yourself first and what it takes to raise your stress level and also keeping a healthy body and healthy mind through exercise and meditation.

Conclusion

Closing the week we put our survival instincts to the test with an exercise about what we would prioritize if we were stranded in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. I gotta say enjoyed these last five days partly because there was not much work (obviously) and because of the cool things I learned.

How I Use VSCode

Brian Gitego — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 18:38:02 +0000

I recently updated and shared my Visual Studio Code settings on How I VSCode.

Check them out and share yours as well!

Time

Brian Gitego — Sat, 03 Apr 2021 09:57:42 +0000

I can't believe it's already been 5 weeks now, these weeks passed by so fast.

We started this week with the good old Team Building session as usual. This one was particularly interesting as we shared pictures of ourselves that teammates did not know to show them more about ourselves. It was cool getting a glimpse of everyone's life outside of work.

This last week we also got a very interesting presentation about Time Management by a Software tester who works with CoA and a fellow developer who works in Nigeria. It was a very insightful presentation as they gave us a very interesting take on Time Management strategies and some hacks we can use to accomplish more while giving less. Some of the key ways/strategies used for better Time Management I took from it are Knowing yourself (How do you work? when are you most effective?), plan ahead, organize yourself (Find a routine and stick to it) and the 80/20 rule (find the 20% of your work that yields 80% of the results and dedicate most of your efforts to it). The 80/20 rule can however be perceived differently for different situations, that is just my personal take on it.

Thursday was extra fun though. We chilled with the Awesome team, played games, watched a movie, had good food, etc. I have to stay, we really closed the week in style. The guys are like a family, it's amazing. I look forward to more memorable moments like that.

That sums it up for the fifth week and on we go into the sixth. Next week will most likely be packed with work on client projects in Wordpress which I am curious how it turns out. Looks like I'm going to pick up something else completely new. Let's see how we do.

Realt.

Brian Gitego — Sun, 28 Mar 2021 09:42:58 +0000

That's a month down and I couldn't be prouder for where we are now compared to when we started.

This last week we dived into design thinking and how we can apply it into our daily work. The concept design thinking which is an approach to problem-solving where the client's needs are considered first is very interesting because it can help me put more effort in what the client wants and not what I think they want. It was also interesting to find out that we sometimes use design thinking without being aware of it. But knowing this is a plus because it can help me avoid wasted time and resources and increase efficiency.

What made this last week the busiest and most challenging so far though was building our own full stack applications from scratch in four days and demoing them on the fifth. We had to figure out how we were going to manage the workflow, build the GUI from the mock-ups and then the server all in just those four days. I was in a team of three and we built Realt, a real estate mobile application that can facilitate people to buy houses without stressing over price negotiation and remove that uncertainty. I learned a lot about working in a team and working under pressure from this and I like to think aside from the continuous app crashes that occurred in the demo that we did a decent job given the circumstances. I also know that that was just a start and I am confident that we will surpass ourselves next time.

Briefly, this last week was not easy but it was worth it and we pulled through. Looking forward to next week where we'll receive feedback on our apps and improve them. It won't be an easy one as well but what is that yields great outcomes?

Team + Culture.

Brian Gitego — Sun, 21 Mar 2021 10:55:51 +0000

Another week passed. This one was a lot less technical and more on the soft skills side. A lot more new things were learned and still more to come.

The most important thing I took away from the five days is Team Culture. I had never thought much about how a team needs more than just skilled members and an effective workflow. Team culture, I learned is a big part of the glue that holds a team together and that without it a team cannot last. I really enjoyed this part of the week because I got to learn about my teammates, turns out there's really a lot we didn't know about each other. I am very confident that we make a cool team.

This week also introduced me to remote collaboration. With excellent tools like Miro which we used quite a bit this last week, working remotely as a team was not just easy but fun as well (Oh God, that sounded like a YouTube ad😄). My new favorite collaboration tool from this week though is Wonder. Personally, I think collaborating remotely with the team pushed us to make better use of our time, think each on our own, and therefore collectively generate more ideas as a team. I am very grateful to the wonderful person who puts her all into our growth as a team.

Last but definitely not least, Friday came with yet another interesting surprise. We were asked to think about the perfect developer backpack and man did I let myself dream. I collected every gadget I want as a developer and it was so fun. And I believe in "The Law of attraction": "The more you think and talk about something, the greater its chances of happening". So, fingers crossed (means Good Luck to me in this case).

Another one down...

Brian Gitego — Sat, 13 Mar 2021 21:08:55 +0000

Another week down at the task force and just like the last one, this one was very interesting as well.

I learned a lot of things in this week especially technical-wise as it was packed with practical sessions where we were learning a new framework and getting more insight into how things are done in the company on a day-to-day basis.

Nest.js was the talk of the week as we went through it from scratch and honestly i think we made unimaginable progress. I couldn't imagine getting this far in a new framework in just one week. Learning everything from setting up, building CRUD endpoints, authentication, security and documentation in just five days is amazing and all thanks to a very gifted member of the Awesomity team.

Something else that i really liked in this week was getting to search the net for different gestures used in communication around the world and how different cultures communicate. It's crazy how much information one can give up without saying a single word. That was also a great experience that i had this last week and definitely something to remember. It's very important to know that one's ways are not everyone's and realize that we need to blend in with the crowd that we're in at the time.

Another definite highlight would be today, More specifically the '5 WHYs'. To be more descriptive, the 5 WHYs is one of the many techniques used in the critical thinking process the helps to identify the cause of the problem. I liked this one in particular because of how it's so effortless and natural and yet so effective. If you're reading this and don't know about this technique already, you should definitely check it out.

Long story short, this was yet another educational, insightful and fun week and i can't wait to see what comes next.

Greetings from Task Force Week 1

Brian Gitego — Fri, 05 Mar 2021 09:42:37 +0000

So, week 1 at the Task Force is over and it has been a joyous ride so far. It's been an interesting and educational experience that is more than I expected.

We kicked it off on the first day with an insightful session about values and just how important they are to the individual, the team and the community in general. That even helped me to revisit my own values and think about them in a new light that I'd never thought them in before.

To infinity and beyond. This expression had a whole new meaning to me on the second day. Tuesday was marked with two Codewars katas that had us scouring the internet with ways to count and operate beyond infinity and thankfully ES2020 came to the rescue with BigInt. Thank you Javascript.

Day 3 was particularly challenging at first but finally turned around. The morning session was about Communication, yet another essential skill in team building that I'm glad I learned more about and the evening had us presenting about Git workflows. Presentation is always challenging for me but only because I lack practice and that is exactly one of the skills i expect to build in the Task Force.

Yesterday was the fourth day and just like Tuesday, it was packed with even more Codewars katas. We pushed our problem solving capabilities a little further yesterday and i expect more of that later to challenge my problem-solving skills. We went on to learn about DevOps at Awesomity and how they do things.

Today has so far been the most educational day of the week. This morning we dived even deeper into the development process here and it is crazy how much goes on after writing code. This evening we'll be up for another presentation on the week's experience and I'm looking forward to it.

Well, that's it for week one at the Task Force.

My first year in code

Brian Gitego — Thu, 19 Sep 2019 20:54:09 +0000

Hey people, it is my first post on DEV and i am excited!!!!!!

It's been roughly 4 months now since i started coding the web and it has been the most resourceful time of my life.

I had learned some computer science in high school and i loved it a lot compared to the other subjects i was taking, it is also where i got my basic foundation in programming by learning C, C++ and some visual basic...until i graduated and there was no more inspiration or motivation to learn more. Then fast forward, 2 years later about 5 months ago, i'm in the university and i hear about Andela, this company that is hiring aspiring software developers and i was interested. And that was because there were't all that may opportunities in software engineering in Rwanda but Andela was specifically looking for those talents that needed opportunities and aiming to mold them into world-scale software developers and I WANTED IN.

So i applied for the fellowship program and from there i started learning html and css from scratch, i had a lot of help from friends, and mostly high school classmates who had gained more coding experience than i had. a few weeks later i started learning javascript and later a lot more as well all the while progressing through the application process for these last few months.

During just those months i have learned what i never thought i could learn in a year (although i know this comes as no surprise to developers),and though it has been hard and trying, it has also been fun and interesting, I have come to realize that coders are some of the coolest, most chill people in the world and that is one of the newest, also undermentioned reasons that push me to work as hard as i can to make it into the world of programming.

I still have a long way to go though, but that's what's great about coding, everyone is always learning something new everyday, be it the Zuckerbergs or the me's, everyone is always learning something from each other and that's why i have come to like coding so much. It is not about how much you already know because for all you know, it could be deprecated in a month cause that's just how technology is -fast,but rather it's about how much new things you are willing to learn. It is not that unlikely that the person you admire in programming may learn something new from you even when they are generally more experienced than you are.

Personally, I feel like making an impact in the world by doing what you love and are passionate about is like listening to the perfect playlist for each time, everyday and that is something that drives me to keep giving my all to programming because even though some other factors in my life may conflict with it, i know it's the right path for me.

That was and still is my first year in coding!