Andela Boot Camp: Day 3
Time moves really fast when you are doing great things, learning new skills you achieve your goals and collaborating with new people. It’s already day three!! I can’t believe it, I’m on a roller coaster experience.
Each boot camp day has had a similar structure and time layout but the experience is quite immersive for each and every day has its amazing story. And today’s story was not different.
I had the chance to build a simple command line application on top a public application programming interface (API). I built a python program that displays recent GitHub events of a user and in the process I had a mind blowing revelation on the power of collaboration.
Being a nerd and loving all the technical aspects of a project sometimes may make it hard to see its human side, its essence. Today I happened to see how the human aspect of collaboration is made very powerful by API technology. Application programming interfaces allow for different software systems to communicate. This makes it possible to build new applications on top existing systems, bringing to life new applications and experiences.
The fact that I did not need to build my own GitHub for my application, but utilized already existing services using an API protocol really blew me away. I quickly realized how amazing it is that one can achieve the dreams without breaking a sweat thanks to the efforts of other people who came before. That’s the power of collaboration!!
What this day has taught me is that contributing and sharing with a community can really go a long way. Embracing open source technologies makes it easier for you and for others to quickly realize their goals without much hustle. Just imagine how much impact this can have in developing economies such as Kenya, East Africa and Africa as a whole. The collective collaboration of great minds and the expertise of experienced people makes making great strides possible.
I’m grateful for this boot camp experience, that is the amazing people at Andela, members of the cohort 14 and the amazing friends I have collaborated with. It has helped me realize that to do great things does not require me to be great, all that matters is the collaborative effort, passion for success and the commitment and belief that you can do it!!
