My Journey To Becoming a Software Developer — The Self-Taught Path

During my service year, I joined ICT CDS out of curiosity. I heard a lot of people saying, IT is the future. Even though I didn’t quite understand what that meant, somehow I found myself believing it. So I thought to myself, Why not locate yourself in place where you can find out exactly why IT is the future.

It all started with SAED in camp. That was December 2017. Think New Horizons! There were other IT instructors in camp, but they were obviously the biggest. So I joined them. When it came to choosing which course to go for, the options were so many that I was momentarily confused. But after the introductory lectures, I decided to settle with Web Design and Development. So I registered in camp.

Fast forward to March 2018. I had completed the course on the very basics of web design and development. HTML, CSS and Dreamweaver.

Something was missing and I knew it. JavaScript!

However I didn’t have the money to enroll for a JavaScript class immediately, so I had to wait till June. Self learning was not an option for me because I had zero prior knowledge of coding. So I knew I had to pay that sum.

Oh, did I mention I’m from a chemical engineering background? Yeah.

JavaScript was magical!

It was my first introduction to real programming. Just learning all the cool stuff you could do with the DOM using JavaScript, I was hooked!

By the time POP came in October 2018, I found myself in a very difficult position: I’d falling in love with tech. However I didn’t know enough to land a job as a programmer, and I needed to get a job so I could pay bills. How I handled that situation is a topic for another article.

In September 2018, I met Andela😊. One huge blessing that came out from meeting Andela was that they inspired me to stick with my new found passion. I applied to their fellowship like 2 or 3 times but got rejected each time. I wasn’t perturbed. I took each rejection as a feedback that there were still miles to go. I just kept going.

Fast forward to January 2019, I’d met Node js and some other server side technologies. Man, I was making progress! However I didn’t quite feel confident enough to start applying.

By April, 2019, ALC4.0 was launched! I’ll tell you more about that later. I applied and got accepted. I poured in hours day and night into it. At the end I was among the 1000 candidates that made it to the certification phase out of the over 125, 000 that applied.

Meanwhile, as ALC4.0 was running, Andela launched yet another program: DevC Training with Andela. I applied for that too. This one culminated to a career fair for the top participants. And yours truly was among 😊.

At this point I knew I was ready for a junior developer role. So I went to the career fair with high hopes. I didn’t get a job from the career fair, but I interviewed with 5 big tech firms and that gave my confidence level a serious boost. This was happening November last year. Meanwhile I’d been actively applying on LinkedIn, Indeed, Jobgurus, Jobberman.

So around that same period, it was as though the floodgates were open. The interviews started pouring in. Each interview consolidated my resolve to continue in my new found path.

In January this year, I got the long awaited email. I was hired!

It was a dream come true. Just to convince myself it’s not just all a nice sweet dream, I wrote a very brief article here outlining the most important lessons I’ve learned so far working as a software developer.

Today, I use technologies like Node js, React and React Native to help build software solutions that address real life problems. I’m also currently exploring cloud computing.

I hope my story inspires you to go after your own dreams.

Thanks for reading and please leave some claps.