Things I learnt from the Andelans

True to it’s EPIC Values;

E-Excellence

P-Passion

I-Integrity

C-Collaboration

1. The Andelans are intelligent people. Excellence plays in everything they do.

2. I saw in them Passion. The Andelas are so passionate enough in what they do and in getting things done, in such a way that they sleep with and wake up with their laptop. LOL. I was guilty of that too at some point some of the Andelans beg me to go and sleep…

3. I learnt that people can be disciplined enough not to dress anyhow even at the amity residence and also disciplined enough not to pick other people’s property. I was opportune to pass several night at amity campus during the boot camp, and I discovered that anywhere you keep your property you can always go back there and find it intact. That’s Integrity. The Andelans are people you can trust!

4. True to its value as per Collaboration. In Andela during my boot camp, I learnt that truly you can find a place here in Nigeria were people can be so loving irrespective of ethical background.

Things I didn’t know about till I got involve with Andela starting from the application process down to boot camp and after…

1. Slack: I was added to the open Andela community. Slack is a platform for easy communication and collaboration. Started using it before, during and after the boot camp.

2. Trello: We were ask to create a Trello account and was able to access our activities for the day through Trello and also got access to our final week two project with the Trello account. Trello account help you manage your work activities in sequence by giving them timelines and differentiating undone work with work in progress and completed task using colours.

3. Scrum: We were also introduced to scrum, during the second week of the boot camp as one of our soft skills, In Scrum you have the scrum team, the scrum master etc. It’s more broad than Trello, but also used for project management. Periodically checking performance.

4. Medium: We were introduced to medium, right from the day 1 of the boot camp we were told to write a post on medium. You can check out my other post on my experience and the journey so far at the boot camp.

5. Github: We were also introduced to github, even do I had little knowledge of git before the boot camp, but used it more at the boot camp, and also got to understand it better as a collaboration tool where people can work together on a project by creating branches and merging with the master. You can also use it to host static web pages.

6. Replit: At the boot camp, saw some fellow campers using it, and got to know about it. It’s an online IDE you can use it to run your code, I enjoy using it.

7. Frecodecamp, Codecademy, Plurasight, W3schools, Tutorials point, Edx, Udacity and Coursera: These are online tutorial platform where you can learn programming the right way.

8. Firebase: we were introduced to firebase in the week two of the boot camp, almost every camper then heard about firebase for the first time. My project require that I use firebase and local storage for my quiz. It was quite fun but was not easy as it was my first attempt with firebase and JavaScript. That’s why I am emphasizing that you go to the boot camp PREPARED.

9. Heroku: Heroku is an online cloud based storage. Some person’s project required that they host their project on Heroku.

10. Stack Overflow: This is a very good platform where you get answers to almost any technical questions online. Sometimes you find out that some questions you want to ask has already been ask by someone else and solutions already provided on stack overflow. Learning how to ask questions and use stack overflow/ Google search is a skill on its own.

11. Project: Be prepared to work on a project that demands almost all functionalities to be in place, it could be a console app, a web app, consuming API, using language like JavaScript, React and Angular Framework and pushing it to github.

After the Boot Camp, here are some of the things I also learnt from the ALC programs;

1. I learnt to collaborate with people both physically and on slack

2. I learnt to work on my own as well

3. I learnt how to ask for help and most of all to make Google my friend, like I will always advice people, Google is your closest friend in programming, because there are times when you will not see people to ask some certain questions and what will you do? Just Google it.

4. I was introduced to Udacity learning platform, and I really enjoyed the tutors all the way, they are great, they make learning fun.

5. I learnt to help others too online and offline and many others.

6. I learnt how to work with android studio, build apps and figure out errors.

In conclusion, don’t just learn for yourself alone, learn well enough so you can impact on others, in other words you too can become a teacher and spread the knowledge. Recently I learnt that “when one teach, two learns” and that’s true, you discover that when you are teaching someone, you learn some new things in the process and it also help you gain better understanding of the concept.

In addition to spreading the knowledge, be creative with your learning, when you learn, think of a problem around you and think of how to proffer solution by building software/ applications that solve problems. Learning is more in doing. Take Action Today!

This article will not be complete without me saying THANK YOU to ANDELA for coming into my life and for changing the world around us. Thanks for the remote programs that’s is giving opportunity to Africans to learn and improve on their skills. Thanks for been a part of my technical stories/ experience. It’s nice to be at Andela and I look forward to it.

Thanks for reading. If you find it educative / informative enough don’t forget to give it a clap, like, share and follow.