My journey into tech started when all of a sudden and out of the blue, an uncle of mine signed me up for a coding BootCamp of some sort. Since then, I have climbed HTML mountains, CSS rivers, and Javascript deserts.
It all started when I got ......
Registered for AltSchool Africa
Had an aunt abroad that knew about AltSchool and decided to enroll my elder brother, my uncle saw I was also seating at home doing nothing and decided to enroll me, at that point what was really on my mind was how I was going to start yahoo.
I decided to learn ahead of the class
AltSchool provided us with material for getting introduced to tech, finished the material and was still hungry for more, so I decided to do my personal digging, first thing that hit me was the high salary for software developers, and boom I went on to learn my first programming language(HTML) 😂
Made the mistake of starting with w3schools
I tried FreeCodeCamp but was facing some difficulties solving the problems on a mobile device, so I switched to w3schools which was better on my smaller screen. Little did I know that w3schools was more like documentation and definitely not one of the best places to start
Passed AltSchool exams
The entrance exams were really easy, I had already mastered big O notation, hill climbing, and greedy algorithms, but then the questions that came out were like English and some general knowledge questions. I started to feel like coding was easier than I thought it was, (how wrong I was)
Discovered the evil that is CSS
I had seen memes about how CSS was bad and all that, but I had just written hello world in HTML and I felt like I was going to build the next Facebook, but CSS was a really humbling experience, I didn’t know I was just beginning, I had yet to discover JavaScript 😪
console.log(“hello world”);
After printing my first hello world in the console, I instantly felt rejuvenated, all the energy CSS had drained from me was suddenly replenished.
I was going along with the merriness of JavaScript until I got to concepts like OOP and classes, and I knew I had had enough, decided to try learning in a different way.
Entered tutorial hell
Went straight to YouTube and realized coding was much more fun when you were watching other people do it. I watched so many Traversy media videos that I started hearing his intro in my dreams
Tried to create projects on my own
Everyone was always talking about how practice is the best way to get better at programming, so I borrowed my aunt’s laptop, installed VScode on it, and built my first webpage, I instantly felt like a pro programmer again 🌚
Realized that the real hell was outside of watching tutorials
But then I started to get into more complex projects, and I started getting drained, it felt like all those time I spent watching Brad Traversy, traversing the DOM never happened, I knew how things worked, but I didn’t know how to utilize them
Lost my will to code
Gradually I started to lose my will to code, I slowly slipped into the world of anime and other distractions. I only coded occasionally, maybe when I had AltSchool assignments or when I just finished a great series and felt like I needed to do something useful with my life
Picked up coding again in August
Discovered Twitter and from there I received a whole lot of motivation, starting from John Oseni, who was a bit younger than me and was already going to Dubai, I was like “this could be me”. I immediately picked up my dusty laptop and began perfecting my JavaScript
I was overflowing with new energy
After getting good at JavaScript I decided it was time for me to advance and so I entered node.js, discovered net ninja’s YouTube channel and decided I was going to code along, I wasn’t going back to tutorial hell
Ventured into technical writing
Sapa was in the air and I knew I was months away from being job ready, so I decided to venture into technical writing, started reading blogs and articles to get the feel of technical writing, that's where I discovered Dillion Megida, another source of inspiration
Things were going so well
I had opened about 3 blogs for my technical writing, one on each of DEV.to, Hashnode, and Medium, my GitHub streaks were full of greens as I was being consistent with coding, I was leet coding, hacker ranking, anything, you name it, I was already pretty sure I was on the path to greatness 💪
ASUU called off the strike
Boom, all my plans just vanished into thin air, I even fell sick at some point 🤧, and started considering dropping out to follow my tech career, made some research and decided against it, resumed school with tech as my primary objective
Had trouble adjusting
I used night plans to do all my tech activities like downloading tutorials, watching videos and other kinds of stuff, it wasn’t much of a problem during the holidays, but I was in school now, where I had classes that started at 8 am in the morning
Stopped attending lectures
Since schooling was my secondary objective at the time, I just went on with coding throughout the night and waking up in the afternoon, I only attended the classes that were convenient for me, or classes where attendance was mandatory.
Failed some tests
Did really badly in my tests, and I knew I had to do something, I decided to put tech on hold to fully focus on school, it wasn’t easy, I had to rush read a lot of topics, finish projects and meet deadlines, I didn’t even have time to write technical articles anymore
Took a break on tech to focus more on school
Done with tests and decided I was going to pay more attention to schooling, as this was time when there were massive hiring freezes and the tech morale was really low, so tech became more of a thing I did in my free time, as per I had a lot to catch up on in school
Now the situation is under control
After a while, everything came to a balance, I am doing well in school, and I still, find time to complete assignments and do personal projects, I barely have enough time to myself anymore, but it will all be worth it in the end, hopefully
Can’t wait for what 2023 holds for me
Ending 2022 on a high note 💪, anxious to see what 2023 has in stock, already preparing for job interviews and scouting out potential job opportunities, come 2023 and I will start applying,
And that's all folks
2022 was a real eye opener for me, I got to learn a lot of things, and most importantly I learnt about tech and for the first time in my life I actually have a concrete plan for my future.
PS: I wrote the entirety of this article on my phone as per NEPA is showing us shege.
Hope you enjoyed it, please leave a like and share it with your friends or something, PEACE ✌️
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