MY BACKGROUND...

I have always loved the 'Tech Space' as a kid. The whole idea of hackers hacking things and looking all cool in foreign movies made the 'Tech Thing' appeal to me more. I thought of taking a computer science course at the university, but naive me felt there was little or no job for computer scientists in my country Nigeria. I mean, I never heard of or seen a hacker in a Nigerian movie, neither have I seen a Nigerian developer or computer scientist at that point in my life, wish I knew better as all I was exposed to were low-budget computer engineers who fix computer hardware. I did not even know I could learn coding myself through youtube and the internet though I had a laptop.

THE IDEA

In my final year at the university, I ran into some people who made me understand that I do not need a computer science degree to code. I did not take their advice seriously till I met a few self-taught developers, read testimonies of devs on Twitter who had no computer science degree, and also learned coding by themselves. During this observation, I was working in the audit department of a government parastatal as an intern, and believe me the job felt so boring. I felt like I wanted something much more interesting, so I started saving to buy a better laptop and finally reached out to some devs on Twitter I could remember reaching out to a few Twitter devs like kelechi and some others whom I can not remember their names and also reached out to a few devs offline, Austin and Dumebi they encouraged me and assured me that switching to tech wouldn't be a bad idea.

MY FIRST STEP

I kept reading stories of devs on Twitter and was convinced that I could make my childhood dream come true. After getting a better laptop, I saved up enough to get me through few months after leaving the internship and focusing on web development. I can still remember how I felt when I wrote my first line of code <h1> HELLO WORLD!!! </h1> I struggled to focus and understand the basics, though I was doing well and passing all the tests I encountered on free code campSo I went against the advice of Austin and paid heavily for a Bootcamp. Austin believed if I bought a course on Udemy I would pick up with time but I felt if I invested more money I would be forced to sit up, I took the gamble and spent my remaining savings in paying for a Bootcamp. To cut the long story, the Bootcamp was too fast for me and we were copying codes so I dropped and took Austin's advice. I got Angela yu's course together with some of Brad Traversy's free youtube videos and men!!! The whole thing was beginning to make sense.

CHALLENGES

Data and power supply were a major cause of concern, considering my country of residence. Aside from power and data, CSS proved to be a major blocker for me, I can clearly remember how I struggled to understand the concept of CSS positioning. Margin and padding gave me a tough time, more so I was also scared of media queries. Guess who loves CSS now ??? If you say me then you guessed right. I stumbled on Brad Traversy's course on CSS together with Angela yu's course I was able to break through the CSS barrier though I am currently fighting the battle of understanding JavaScript more, and I think I am beginning to get along with Reactjs.

How Far I've come

Few months into the tech industry, I showcased the little things I built to anyone who cares to listen, and that was how I got my first gig - A simple landing page. I also featured in a few internships like HNGi7 to Interning with some firms. I am hoping to land a big Frontend job, and as the day goes by

CONCLUSION

I might not be where I want to be currently, but I believe I wouldn't trade my journey for anything. I would rather battle with bugs daily than sitting on a chair to sign vouchers daily. I have always loved the Idea of coding so, you could say I am chasing my dreams.