Advice From A 20 Year Old Nigerian Software Developer

Living on this planet (in this lifetime) for 2 decades now, I’ve come to learn a lot of good (and bad) things from everyone and everything around me, I’ve done stuff people my age dare not to (talking about good vibes here…). Some people identify with me as a nerd, one who just looks at screens everyday — maybe he doesn’t have a life, but I don’t think they get what I really do, even when I try so, so hard to explain it. I’ll share what I actually do on a normal day, and what I’ve done so far in order to be a software developer.

If you’re new to programming, you should grab one or two important points from this article.

Yeah, I’m a self-acclaimed Sticker Ambassador!

Let’s talk about me, and how I got started with coding

I’m Francis, a 20-year-old guy living in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and I’m a software developer today. I’m growing a strong following online, trying my best to motivate someone out there through the content I share.

In my country Nigeria, the tech community came to its peck way back in 2014. I wrote my first line of code when I was 17 years old. I built a semi-tech blog where I was dabbling HTML and CSS, and a little bit of JavaScript, the blog got a good following, but I wasn’t serious with it, and its long dead. My progress I’d say wasn’t at a fast pace. I didn’t really have friends who code, neither did I have someone I looked up to (my bad), I didn’t really know much about developer communities around me even when there was. I told my parents about the new skill I was developing, they didn’t even understand jack out of it LOL. I kept on building stuff and yeah I felt like Zeus the Greek god and most the times, a total jerk. Then I had no idea that this stuff was something I could make a living off. I got my first client about a year after. It was a website design gig for a health firm. I didn’t really know much about charging clients but the pay I got from my first gig, was what I could earn in 7 months from the job I was doing — it was time to get serious.

Talk about education, I finished high school when I was 18, and to this moment, ehm.. I’m still contemplating on going to a university (Nigerian) — this may change in future. This is scary I know most especially in my country where almost all sectors look at educational certifications and credentials before one’s skills. I spent so much time trying to get the best grades in high school to hopefully land in an awesome university. Wrote and re-wrote silly examinations poorly regulated, in turn wasting years of my life. I still don’t regret these though — everything happens for a reason, either good or bad.

No work experience I think I’m doomed!

I became really serious about programming when I was around 18, I put 100% of my time and energy to programming. I literally scrapped the web with the thirst for knowledge. I was doing all these on a low key while trying to know more stuff, I forgot I needed something to show to an employer or recruiter if asked. I had built so many stuff, some of them silly (but nothing is too silly). I learned Version control with Git and Github and hosted some of my code online.

I had a hard time with non-technical clients. Yeah, they don’t know what you mean when you say you can build a REST API with JavaScript, or you can spin off and EC2 instance easily with one command, they just want to see what you’ve done in the past. That I didn’t really have. I was too ashamed to show them clients file upload scripts I worked on in PHP, or a JavaScript-powered calculator, it didn’t fit in. I hacked my way around with the help of referrals and big talks. I was able to build up a clientèle and yeah the pay was cool, my parents were impressed at the amount of money I was earning, I could swear they had gone to pray in church severally thinking I was a scammer LOL.

You may not really learn to code at school, you’ll learn by building stuff. Most companies don’t care if you have a CS degree, they want to know how good your coding skills are.

Building a personal brand

I’ve been able to build (still building) up my software development skillset over the years, I can build products with several languages such as, JavaScript (with the MERN stack), PHP (with Laravel), HTML/CSS, and Go (I love this baby), and I also use awesome power tools for my workflow. I take my social media accounts really seriously. When my online following was growing, I had to go back to my various social accounts to delete some silly stuff I had posted when I was younger, I don’t want any recruiting agency seeing silly content, that may be a big red flag.

I write technical articles on my BLOG and on other online publications like The Practical Dev. I’ve designed (and redesigned) my personal website myself to showcase some of my latest works (I can legally show). I mentor and offer freelance services on Codementor. I really try not to stay idle, I make use of social media to spread the word about the tech community, awesome tools I use or discovered, food, and myself too. I rant on twitter @codehakase, and inspire with images on Instagram @codehakase.

Community matters

a shot by techpoint — forLoopAfrica meetup Lagos 2017

One awesome thing about coding, is the massive amount of people in various communities doing awesome things to push the word about tech to the ends of the earth. These communities have been a major part of most successful techies today. Some of these communities are Google Developer Groups, ForLoop Africa, Microsoft Developers Network, Frontstack, etc.

I’ve contributed in my own way to the Nigerian tech communities, I co-organized the maiden meetup for the Port Harcourt chapter for ForLoop Africa, I co-lead a local developer community in Port Harcourt — PHDevConnect. I’ve facilitated, volunteered for other local communities and tech events in Nigeria. It’s so amazing how I’m able to be part of movements inspiring people to indulge in tech. My experience so far has been spectacular.

You see, no screens around, just me (with the silly smile), Rico, and his pal

Outside Work, My Daily life

I’m quite a busy person even outside programming, I don’t really stay idle. So what do I do on a regular day?

I try to take a walk. I spend most of my time sitting, taking a walk reliefs me off stress, and gets my brain in a good shape. I’m a music fanatic too, I play the violin and the piano. I secretly compose pieces for the piano and other orchestral instruments (unfortunately I haven’t finished any to publish yet).

I also do some other stuff like trading cryptocurrencies, Forex, and a little Day trading.

I devote some time to working on my personal projects. They help broaden my technical skills. I sometimes build stuff with new technologies I haven’t tried before to get the experience. Most times, things don’t go as planned yikes! But hey I’m super cool at googling stuff. I sometimes figure out things and yes I feel happy because I could do it again and again, its now stuck in memory.

I do some CS stuff. Though I don’t have a formal computer science background, I try my best to get to know the CS fundamentals. I’m taking Harvard’s CS50 and yeah the content of that course is super awesome. I also go to YouTube to checkout interesting videos on programming, and computer science, and algorithms.

I try to keep up with the software development community. I read up articles on tech blogs, to learn something new, like a new feature from the languages I develop in, or the new tech that’s out.

I try out new eating spots. Eating is what I can’t do without. I’m a foodie (a nutritious one), I try out new cuisines from new or my favourite spots. I like to spoil myself to a good meal once in a while (actually once a week lol) sometimes with friends or just me. One has to be healthy to be super productive during work.

I sometimes go parting (hope my parents aren’t reading this…) on Friday nights, to shake off work stress, though I’m not into alcohol and smoking, I just stick to softs — health is important here people.

Conclusion

While writing this article, I had to reflect deep, and took a deep drive into memory lane. I remember some time ago when I was around 12 or thereabout, I loved science fiction movies a lot. I always wanted to become a mad scientist LOL. Then I’d also see hackers and programmers in movies being portrayed as super intelligent humans,. Oh boy, I got pretty scared while I got older, I never thought I’d be a developer today, I wasn’t super cool with math (you don’t really need much maths to program). Programming, in general, is for everyone. If you love to create stuff try it, its not hard as people make it seem like.

If you haven’t seen any useful tip or point to take home with from this text of mine, don’t forget any of these:

• Programming is not designed for a specific group of smart persons, absolutely anyone can write good computer programs. I know people who’ve switched to programming from a totally different career line.
• While taking the bold step to choosing this field, you should know its normal to feel awkward and uncomfortable most times, don’t let those weigh you down, they should push you to do more rather.
• While in your quest to being a world class software engineer, as a steady booster, look back and see how far you’ve come, how much you’ve improved from the previous day, week or year, you’d be super motivated to continue.
• Join online communities, attend meetups, network with others like you, it helps a lot, you’d find someone to share your story with

I really enjoyed writing this piece, I hope you enjoyed reading? Did I miss something important? Feel free to leave a comment below.

You can connect with me on Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Linkedin

Cheers!

This piece was inspired by Lydia Hallie’s article