DEV Community: Nabeelah

Nabeelah Persevered, Coded and Prevailed 💪🏽

Nabeelah — Fri, 06 Mar 2020 20:01:34 +0000

The year was 2017. I had just graduated with a BSc in Microbiology and had no idea what to do with my life. I had a really good grade but was not passionate about the degree and could not even envision myself working as a microbiologist. I also definitely knew that I didn't want to follow the path my elders in my community wanted me to go; become a lecturer, get married and have kids. No way!

However, a great opportunity was coming to me within a month or 2 and I could not afford to waste it... The National Youth Service Corps. For those that do not know, it is basically a year where a newly graduated student under 30 years of age in Nigeria will have to serve their country back. The reason why I was so excited about it was that I get to be posted to a completely different state within Nigeria. Away from parents and responsibilities. Time to live my own life according to my terms. My dad wasn't happy... 😅.

I got posted to Abuja, about 600 km from Lagos where I stayed and I couldn't have been more happier. A place where no one knew me or my family. Puuurrrfect!!!
I won't say my year in Abuja was all smooth sailing and happy, there were definitely days I cried my eyes out and wanted to give up on the whole expedition. But these were some of the series of events that got me into tech

Broke as hell 😭:

Because I did not plan ahead about how I could feed myself and get a job while living in a strange land, I got absolutely broke. Luckily my parents gave me enough to rent a place for the year and the government stipends helped a bit but it wasn't enough. Luckily for me, I knew I was skilled in desktop development and knew my way around a computer; a skill a lot of small business were looking for. So I started cold calling various companies I got via Google under the keyword technology companies . Quite smart, ayy 😄

Internship:

Cold calling worked!!! Turned out that a particular company I called was looking for someone like me. It was owned by a lady whom till this day owe her for how she nudged me into software engineering, a discipline I never knew ladies were allowed to be part of 😂. She created websites for businesses that needed them either with WordPress or static websites with plain ol' HTML and CSS. After observing her for a while, she allowed me design and create websites for her clients.

Online Courses:

After telling a friend back in Lagos about the kind of job I was doing in Abuja, she shared with me a link that introduced me to the Andela Learning Community. Andela is one of best software engineering firms in Nigeria so I decided to sign up for it. Took a short test and was accepted to join the community. They gave us access to almost everything you needed to know about software engineering on the EDX platform for 2 - 3 months. When my boss heard about it, she was so excited on my behalf, trusted me with the keys to her office so I can use her WiFi late into the nights and on the weekends. Damn!

NYSC slowly ending:

At this point, I was getting really comfortable with the whole websites creation, manipulating WordPress site templates that my boss left me with everything. And I loved it! However my NYSC year was coming to an end and that means I should be getting back to Lagos. Then my boss suggests I stay back with her with a 5x salary raise. Hell yes! Unfortunately 3 months in, due to family pressure and how African dads believe that girls are not supposed to stay on their own , I tearfully said my goodbyes to my boss and headed back to Lagos.

Anger:

Because I was so livid about the narrative of what a female should do where I lived, I decided to prove them wrong. But it was not only about that. I was also angry at myself that for a while, I had believed them somewhat indirectly. I remember when my boss mentioned that I should try to apply for the Andela bootcamp because she noticed I was pretty good at what I did and enjoyed it. And I also remember replying that they were not looking for newbies like me. I recalled her being angry at me for putting myself down without even trying 😅.
The intense anger was all it took for me to take her up on her suggestion to join Andela and believe that I could do it. So upon arriving in Lagos, I signed up for the bootcamp. A place I thought I could never belong in. I threw myself into preparing for their bootcamp which was hell 😓. Failed the 1st round and applied for the next immediately.

On the 1st of April, 2019 I freaking got in!!! It was the day I wore a tag with my freaking name on it that said 'Software Engineer'. I made it y'all ✌🏾.

P.S. 6 months later, I was laid off due to a whole restructuring thing but that's a story for another day. Trust me I am in a happy place 🤗. I have met so many many amazing people who helped me grow and made me into a better coder. And I would have not gotten my current job at Lambda as a team lead to teach others to be as badass as me 💪🏽without getting into Andela.

Tackling Project Demo Anxiety

Nabeelah — Sun, 26 May 2019 22:53:58 +0000

A day before my big demo, I decided to do a test run. All telltale signs of anxiety were apparent on me; sweaty palms, shaky hands, using filler words such 'hmm' and 'so', stuttering over words and my audience trying so hard to grasp what I was saying. Needless to say, my presentation was a disaster and to make matters worse, it was a zoom call. What would have happened if I was supposed to give a speech in person?

I knew right away that if I was to succeed in my demo presentation the next day, I needed all the feedback I could get from my 'pseudo-audience', no punches withheld. The amazing feedback I got from my Project Manager was an absolute lifesaver. And I would love to share them with you.

Start with 'Why'.

Why did you start this project? Why did it interest you? Rather than jumping in and telling your audience what your product does, tell them why you decided to work on it and why you connect with it. It allows the audience to connect with it as well and appreciate it more.
Speak about your team if you worked with one.

If you were picked by your team to demo the project, never use the word 'I'. Not only does it seem that you created the product on your own, but it also undermines the effort your team put in to make the project a success. Always use 'we'. If possible, create a page/slide that contains your team's profile and in a few words describe the highs and lows you had while working with them. They'll appreciate it.
What does your website/application do?

After introducing your project, speak about its features, what problem does it seek to solve. To make things easier, have a Technical Design Document (TDD) before the commencement of your project which includes its features, frameworks used, and your app's target audience. This makes it easier for you and your team to explain the app's functionality. Also comparing your app to similar real-life products and doing a competitor analysis allows the audience to get a feel of your product and understand what it does.
Know Thy Audience

I cannot emphasize this enough. Of what use is it to present your product using technical jargon to an audience who does not understand jack about code. Tailor your presentation to suit the audience.
If they are not software developers or are not in the field at all, tell them more about the why of the product, what it does and how its cool features set it apart from its other competitors in the market. Check out this post for more tips.
If your audience is leaning more on the technical side, you can delve more on the kind of stacks your product is using, frameworks and the likes.
If they are a bit of both, try to balance it to suit both sides.
Feedback

Make your audience feel involved. Ask them for their thoughts on how to improve the product. They are the ones who will eventually use it. Getting opinions from a non-technical point of view may open your eyes to new ideas which in turn leads to a better product.

For those wondering how my demo went, it was fantastic 😃. Sure I still had sweaty palms and shaky hands but going through the above tips and practising them allowed me to deliver my speech with confidence that even shocked me. I hope these tips help you as much as it helped me.

Is NodeList an Array?

Nabeelah — Mon, 20 May 2019 10:33:56 +0000

This was one of the various questions that bugged me when I started learning Javascript. I could use a .forEach() loop on a NodeList but could not use other array methods such as .map(), .filter(), etc. What was the big deal?

Let's take a look at this block of code.

<div class="divs">
    <div class="div"></div>
    <div class="div"></div>
    <div class="div"></div>
    <div class="div"></div>
    <div class="div"></div>
    <div class="div"></div>
</div>

<script>
const divs = document.querySelectorAll('.div');
console.log(divs);
</script>

To get all the divs with a class of 'div', I use the document method of querySelectorAll(). This, in turn, returns an array like-list of 'divs' along with some array properties such as length as shown in the image below.

So basically, why does it give the error below when I try to run array methods such as .map()?

const individualDiv = divs.map(div => div);
console.log(individualDiv);

This is due to the fact that a NodeList may look and behave like an array but it does not have access to all array properties and methods.

In order to utilize the array properties and methods, we will need to convert it to an array. One way to do so is to use the Array.from() method.

const divs = document.querySelectorAll('.div');
let divArr = Array.from(divs);

If you prefer ES6 methods, the spread operator is a really simple way of converting it to an array.

let divArr = [...document.querySelectorAll('.div')]

And voila... array methods are good to go on any of the two above. If you would like to delve more into this subject, the MDN documentation is a great place to start 🙂.

DEV Community: Nabeelah

Nabeelah Persevered, Coded and Prevailed 💪🏽

Broke as hell 😭:

Internship:

Online Courses:

NYSC slowly ending:

Anger:

Tackling Project Demo Anxiety

Start with 'Why'.

Speak about your team if you worked with one.

What does your website/application do?

Know Thy Audience

Feedback

Is NodeList an Array?