NEAR Developer Certification Spotlight.
Web3clubs first certified developer by NEAR.
This is the first part of an ongoing series featuring web3clubs NEAR Certified Developers who are part of the 1st cohort organized by Web3 Developer Student Clubs to learn about the NEAR Blockchain. You can find more information about the Bootcamp here.
Before Dalmas started learning about the NEAR protocol, he had a clear goal in mind, he wanted to gain the necessary skillsets using blockchain technology in order to build an MVP (minimum viable product) and experience the whole process of turning ideas into products. We got a chance to listen to his thoughts about being our first NEAR Certified Dev which wasn’t an easy task.
Tell us a little bit about yourself (where you’re from, what you’ve previously worked on, etc.)
Hello, my name is Dalmas Ogembo. I’m from Kisii county, Kenya. I studied at Multimedia University of Kenya and attained my degree in Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting with second class honors. I’m a self taught software developer, gaining a deep passion to code and learn different languages and frameworks such Javascript, Rust, Java, and ReactJs.
I have done a number of projects depending with the requirements from the client and I have been able to publish up to twelve different websites for various purposes. Currently I’m working on both a real estate project to list available renting houses using ReactJS and a software as a service website using nextJS for blogging and SEO purposes.
When and why did you first get excited about blockchain technology?
I got the urge to learn more about blockchain when I did my first trade with paxful, selling my Bitcoin which I received as a freelancer. With this, I wanted to know all about cryptocurrency and how it works, I was especially intrigued with building DApps using Ethereum, realizing to its potential I switched to its research and development.
Tell us about your project (what is it, how does it work?)
I did my NEAR project for certification which was a ToDo application which has all the common functionality like creating, reading, updating and deleting a to-do.
What key real-world problem does your project aim to address?
This project aims at helping people to be able to manage their tasks easily and know which tasks are pending for them to undertake. In the NEAR protocol, this can be useful in terms of people writing what they intend to do within a certain period of time such as staking their coins, sending some coins to others at a certain time, scheduling automatic coin dispatch and more other tasks and then letting the system do the tasks and mark them as complete whenever they are done.
What made you interested in building on the NEAR network?
One of my friends reached out to me concerning NEAR Protocol’s Bootcamp organized by Web3Clubs and asked me to join. I saw it as a great opportunity to learn about the NEAR protocol as it is in line with what I wanted to learn. I found it tough on the first day though because of Rust, but with my abilities, I went ahead with the training and found it easy at the end.
Did you face any challenges and in case you did how did you go about it?
When building the project, I faced one of the most common challenges that was noticeable, it was a new technology when doing the project. So, I encountered a number of errors since well, I was not pleasant with the tech. After knowing how to deal with most things in Rust, then the development process became easy.
What made you interested in building on the NEAR network?
The NEAR network is easy to learn and it is well documented in that most of the things I fail to get I always get them online for reference. The NEAR SDK is quite friendly and also the integration with Rust is nice that the things I require, I can easily get them through the SDK.
What’s one of your favorite NEAR network features that you’ve discovered while working on your project?
NEAR network’s SDK comes with a bunch of things that are important such as the account details and transaction history. With this one can build a fully autonomous banking like application that can help in selling and buying of coins. With this one can build a fully autonomous banking like application that can help in selling and buying of coins within the market. Also, the integration of the NEAR SDK with Ethereum opens all the avenues to other coin networks such as BTC since Ethereum is linked to BTC and BTC to others making NEAR to be one of the best web3 protocols.
How can others try out your app or learn more about what you’re working on?
My project is uploaded at GitHub, https://github.com/dalmasonto/NEAR-ToDo-App. To try out this project, you need to be logged into your account preferably your NEAR testnet account from the terminal and using the commands given in the ReadMe available at the GitHub project, you can interact with it easily.
Wrapping up
This has been a great experience for me. The excitement of building something I always wanted to build was awesome. I can’t explain how joyful I felt after fixing that nasty bug or completing that small feature. It’s so satisfying. Sometimes it got frustrating, but eventually, I somehow ended up solving the problem.
It’s not just about coding. It’s about problem-solving. The more you do it, The better you become. I have always believed in learning by building and I will encourage you to do the same.
