Apr 22
“Hello, World!”; Crossing the Rubicon
My academic life was a smooth one in the early stages. I had good grades and did not take out time to think about my preferences or consider possible areas of interest. You know how it goes in Nigeria; 6–3–3–4. For me, transitioning into senior secondary was an obvious call. I was not interested in the sciences, I could not quite wrap my head around all those formulas. However, I rapidly picked an interest in literature and other art-related subjects.
Once I was done with my WAEC examination, I registered for the JAMB examination. Looking back at my available course choices, Law seemed like the best choice at the time for whatever reason. I got into the university, had some issues in my third year, and decided I was done.
At the time, Mark Essien the CEO of hotels.ng was organizing free coding classes. I had ample opportunity to learn, but I had convinced myself that coding was not my thing. I let the opportunity slip through my fingers.
Years later, a lot of guys I know who had been learning to code had changed their lives and here I was.
I visited Miracle — a friend from the university — to discuss issues regarding the creative industry. She introduced me to Babs.
You know it never takes too long before the great knotty question pops up in any social setting….
“So, what do you do?”
“Oh! I’m into Cybersecurity.” Babs replied.
I am certain that was the first time I had met a cybersecurity professional in my life. I was into show business at the time so, I carried on with it regardless.
Over the years, the demand for developers and other computer professionals has grown exponentially. I started to give serious thought to switching careers. I recalled Babs and decided I was going to have a career in cybersecurity. It is something many young people fantasize about — hacking! I did my research and realized I had to learn the basics of networking and at least one programming language. Preferably python.
It was New Year’s Eve and I went to hang out with my friend Andrè. I disclosed to him my intentions to switch to tech and he encouraged me to do it.
He said: “We missed out on the oil boom, let’s not miss out on the tech boom”.
That was all the push I needed to get in.
I was deliberate about getting into the space. Thank goodness for smartphones. I started getting tech-related ads and then I stumbled on a post from ALT School Africa. I was excited, I registered, got the materials, and started to prepare for the exams.
I sent the post to my friend Felix. He told me he had signed up for ALX and it’s free. Initially, I thought I should focus on ALT School Africa but then I saw an ALX ad while scrolling through Instagram stories and “we miss all the shots we do not take.” Right? Yes! I signed up for ALX too.
Welp! Good news and not-so-good news. I got in to learn backend development at ALX but I failed to reach the cut-off mark for the ALT School Africa admission. Damn! All that algebra and word problems I tried to run away from came back to haunt me. 😅
Nevertheless, I continued with ALX. I also had to re-learn algebra and revisit mathematics a little. Damn right!
Initially, I experienced so many difficulties learning new concepts. I spent days trying to set up my GitHub. Pushing commands from my ubuntu command line to my GitHub repositories was such a herculean task. The ALX curriculum had us learning Bash Scripting as beginners! Who does that?! As if that wasn’t enough, we are currently learning the C programming language. New concepts are constantly being built on the previous ones. You have to understand each concept before you can proceed to the next.
Our technical mentor at ALX— Mr Maarten Van Middelaar said that C programming language is procedural. It helps us think logically and when we understand the concepts, we will be able to take on any other programming language with less hassle. I hope it does get easier.
Well, I am grateful for the experiences so far. I got to learn about First Principle Thinking, Feynman Learning techniques, and weirdly cool stuff like; rubber ducking. It has been over a month and I have made hundreds of commits to my GitHub. I have made friends from peer learning and I have worked on a task with an experienced full-stack programmer.
More so, ALT School Africa granted me access to their resources for a month and will admit me into the program if I make it through the first semester exams after 3 months.
Am I excited? Yes! Am I scared? Damn right! Do I feel like I am not qualified to have “Backend Developer” on my profiles? You best believe. This is the most difficult thing I have done in my life. Nevertheless, I have no regrets whatsoever.
Well, you probably noticed I started out trying to get into information security and ended up taking a backend programming path. I don’t have it all figured out. I guess I will just enjoy the ride and cross bridges when I get there. “Step by step” as my AI Engineer friend Mfonobong Isine would say.
My subsequent articles will address the challenges I faced doing certain tasks and projects in the course of my learning at the aforementioned institutions.
If you are reading this and like me, you are still trying to figure things out, we can connect and find a way to support each other.
If not, pointers would be appreciated. ❤️💡
