I will try as much as possible to make this article not be just about my story but to also serve as a guide for fellow young developers who are planning to dive into or already started a career as a developer or computing world in general. I would have titled this article something like “8 things that will make you a better developer in few months” or something like, “8 things you need to stay put in becoming a developer” but who am I? as a matter of fact, I don’t see myself with such authority to boastfully start stating headlines like that because I am still a learner with little experience like you are. But not to worry, I will still spell out some of the things that helped and still helping me hold on in my quest so far.

Before we begin, here is a brief introduction about myself. My name is Temitayo AFOLABI, a finalist in the department of Computer Science and Engineering, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria. And here is my story.

I started my web development career about five months ago; five months of intense training and total dedication and I can tell you that it feels like I have been doing it a long time ago.

It took me so long to start web development because I have always been engaged and interested in computer network and had a change of mind because to be recognized as a network personnel, you need certifications which for me are expensive. And I thought within myself, “why the wait?” Why can’t I just start something I can equally learn by myself and build on. Something of value that is highly demanded for. And I could remember at the time, I started asking friends, colleagues and google different questions to know the next course of action. And as a matter of fact, JavaScript made the top of my list. Then I told myself, “if I am willing to go, I have to go far. If I am going to pick, it had to be full stack”. And so far, I am just one third away from becoming a frontend developer with sound knowledge of html, CSS and bootstrap (a CSS framework) and here are few things that has helped me so far, and I think will be of great use to many beginners out there.

1. HAVE A STRONG WHY

I learnt this in my first days of hitting the gym. I usually go to the gym house back then which is about 4km away from where I stay. I would get to the gym and after doing few minutes of workout, I would have gotten tired. Sometimes, I would just sit down and do nothing when I see guys with big chest and full packs working out. Intimidation would not even make me pull my shirt off atimes because I was ashamed of my small body. Then one day, I approached one of them and asked how it became so easy for them that most of them even do two sessions a day and the guy said to me, “you need a reason for doing it”. I really did not understand what he meant at first but I later did. The beginning is always tough. Life will push many reasons why you should quit at you. You will feel like, this is not for me, I am not making an impact, I am not improving. You will even get intimated when you see guys doing different things and be like, “I don’t think I can do this”. That is the time you need to think about why you were standing in the first place. This has been my biggest drive. I don’t just want to be a Computer Engineer with just certificates. I tagged it “my leverage plan” back then. I need something I can trade with. Do not get me wrong, money is not my drive. I don’t want to graduate and have nothing to offer; nothing that I am good at. And being idle has always being my fear.

2. GET THE RIGHT RESOURCES

One of the biggest gift this generation of ours have is the internet, which gave birth to YouTube and a lot of resourceful materials. For me, YouTube is a blessing because if there has ever been any self taught knowledge I have acquired, it is through YouTube. Every great developer out there either watches tutorial videos or read books or does both. So, invest in these things and make good use of them. I started back then with html videos by EJ Media

You can also check out this interesting learning content resources from books, to videos, to podcast and lot more as it also covers alot of skills as far as computing is concerned click here. It’s a page created by rubyspch and thanks to different developers around the world that helped to make the list a long one. And it’s beginner friendly.

3. GET YOUR HANDS DIRTY

Everything always look simple when watching tutorial videos. You seem to be very clear with everything that is being explained but I can guarantee that, you are not learning anything without practicing. Some instructions may even be as simple as a single line of code but you never know how powerful they are until you get to use them in projects. You can just google whichever thing you are working on and check for projects for beginners. Just type something like “10 projects for html/CSS/bootstrap/JavaScript/whichever programming language you are building on for beginners”.

4. SET GOALS AND TARGETS

Setting goals will give you a sense of direction. Like a “foresight” to where you are going and it’s going to allow you to know the path you should follow to get to your destination. I will recommend you set your goals so high and work your way to its realization. Always remember the popular saying

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you will still land on one of the stars”.

I set up my LinkedIn profile even before I dived in and put it on private mode (that only me can see it). And I did that because I told myself, “let me gradually work my way towards getting to the target I set, and when I can fully boast that I am, I will make it go public". You will never know how far you are moving until you start building things and meeting target. You can just tell yourself, “this week, I want to build a landing page with certain features. And coming week I will do this and that”. It is okay if you do not meet your target at first. It happens to every beginner. But just make sure you do not stop moving. Even if you miss deadlines and land on one of the stars, it is still out of earth anyway…lol.

5. BUILD A CIRCLE OF FRIENDS WITH COMMON GOALS AS YOURSELF

I could remember about two months ago when I became unserious and was idle for about three days in a row working on nothing. I was not happy about it and felt bad. Then I called a friend and talked to him about it. Then he promised to give me an udemy course content full of projects to work on when next we see. Only God knows how happy I was that day. This is so to everyone. Always have it in mind that you can not grow alone. And even if you can, imagine how fast it would be if you are surrounded with people who you all grow together.

6. JOIN DEVELOPERS’ COMMUNITY

Trust me, this is going to be helpful in your journey. It is going to expose you to a lot of things that goes on out there and will also give you the opportunity to share your work out to people and allow developers around the world to get you corrected, which will help you get better. You will also be priviledged to check out other people’s work and correct them too. Few of the community I know of are #100DaysOfCode on twitter and Code Academy community on Facebook. Check out rubyspch resource link in (1) above, it is full of a lot of them.

7. CREATE A VERSION CONTROL ACCOUNT

Version control is the practice of tracking and managing changes to code over time. It will also serve as an online storage for your projects. one of the most popular in use today is called Git. It is free and open source. You can learn how to use git here

8. JOIN AN INTERNSHIP PROGRAMME

One of the advantage of internship is to gain priceless work experience. You have been learning and practicing on your own, setting guidelines, deciding what you want and how you want things to look like. It’s time to work by being directed. You will be given instructions and get them worked on. It allows you to put all you’ve been building in real test. And this is the present stage where I am in my development career. If there has ever been anything that I have learnt in this part of the world where I grow up, “it is never to rush anything; one step at a time”. I have been thinking about joining an internship programme for weeks now and fortunately for me I came across a link shared to my department group and it led me to Zuri. It is an online platform that offers internship programme, you learn and work on tasks at the same time which interests me a lot. And that is why I chose Zuri. Things I planned to get at Zuri at the end of my internship programme:

• Increase my circle of friends.
• Become a better me by working on various projects and tasks.
• Be a complete full-stack developer. and
• Improve on my problem solving skill.

I hope you find this piece helpful and I wish you all the very best as you aim for the sky and work your way towards it.

And once again, I am Temitayo AFOLABI and this is my journey so far.

Thank you