Starting Your Journey as a Developer

Temiloluwa Olushola
Nov 2 · 3 min read

There’s always a beginning to a journey and this one is not different. So how about a first hand story of a great one?

Ever wondered how every great developer, founders of big tech giants and great startups achieved their current position, it’s simple, in fact it’s an action you initiate everyday. What they did is start, they just did it and kept doing it.

If what I said above is in any way vague, kindly finish the article, at the end you would have a clear perspective of what I’m saying.

A little background

I started programming at the age of 15 ( quite old yeah I know ). Way before I made up my mind on studying computer science, technology has always fascinated me and here I am now, pursuing my dream. Before I got into university, most of my passion for tech was drawn from Artificial Intelligence, using or implementing anything in that field was a dream, it still is but just the second part. At the time, one of my dreams was to become the father of Artificial Intelligence, if it’s a thing but you get the picture. Now that I have a deeper understanding of AI, it just means I have a lot more work to do.

My first dive into actual programming was when I took an online course on edx —CS50 ( Introduction to Computer Science by Harvard University ), taught by David Malan. This course inspired me in so many ways and I learned a lot one of which is a little history some of incredible technology, second was how I could apply the most basic skills to solve daily problems and most importantly it gave me a strong foundation on fundamental programming knowledge.

I was so inspired and geared that I built something and exhibited at an exhibition fair in my first year, I didn’t win but I was proud of what I had built. To be honest I built it just the night before but my confidence and my little skill had me going strong. Even though I didn’t win I felt fulfilled. I got good criticism from the invited guests and judge, and other students said it was a nice idea and loved it.

The Journey

Yeah, so I kept going picked up languages like Java and PHP, did a little python, learned OOP and then I met web programming just at the time when desktop apps were being phased out by some amazing web technologies. So going into web development, I took an HTML and CSS course online, then Bootstrap. Fast forward to a year later, I fell in love with backend web development, for me that’s where the most fun is, building, maintaining and integrating APIs, building business logic, process management, deployment, etc. I had a mentor during my internship, Chuks. He introduced me to a wide array of technologies within a very short period of time. I remember when he asked me to learn this new Javascript framework with similar architecture as Laravel -AdonisJS. I didn’t even know javascript. All he said was I should go through their documentation and w3schools tutorial for both Javascript and NodeJS then gave me a project to work on and now I can say I’m a full-stack javascript developer, after about a year of learning, debugging, tutorials and projects.

Right Now

I am a graduate with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Babcock University and I am now open to the world. I mean on the path to living my dream, I’m crushing goals leading to it. To point it out, during my internship I attended a product launch at Microsoft, Nigeria and I got to meet a guy with a Ph.D. in a field of AI. I asked him for advice on how to go and his advice was to first get grounded in the fundamentals i.e. have a specialization in another field well I have now gone a long way with specialization don’t you think

What’s next

Keep grinding, there’s always something to learn, a great idea to implement, a way to make the world better with my code, someone to help, in alignment with my stated dream which is now a goal while understanding that even if failure occurs I was successful.


So kindly share and subscribe and follow me on this journey.

My twitter: @jtolushola

Temiloluwa Olushola

Written by

Living my best life and sharing my thought process

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade