I DON’T WANT TO BE A CODER ANYMORE!
MY TIIDELAB EXPERIENCE 1.0
Alright wait! Hear me out. You may be wondering why I came up with this decision. Well, let me take you back to the beginning.
About a month ago, I got into this fellowship and no it’s not a church before you ask. It’s a programming fellowship. It’s not the conventional kind of programming fellowship you’re used to though, it actually puts the interest and development of the fellows first.
Think, Ideate, Innovate, Develop and Execute. These words are strong words, words that are associated with strong characters, and that is what this fellowship is all about. It is a laboratory where strong characters are built. It’s very fitting then that they named it TIIDELab.
The idea was to breeze in, learn coding, be a coder and breeze out. After all it would only be for 5 months. Piece of cake, right?! Well, I was wrong!
I was inducted on the 7th of July, 2021. It was a dynamic induction, not just because it was done remotely, but because it really felt like a physical induction. I know right! Yeah, the guys at TIIDELab are that good! Though I said to myself “it’s just an induction, let’s see how they pull of an 80% remote fellowship program. Little did I know I was about to be taken to wonderland.
Our first person of contact was Mr. Shamsudeen Aderoju, aka ‘Big Brother’. We’ll come back to him in a bit. And yes, be afraid, be very afraid.
The first week, we were introduced to Git and GitHub. Our facilitator was Miss Grace Ejegwa. I leant about the fundamental of Git, and its importance in facilitating work breakdown amongst programmers. Using git bash made me feel like I was working for the CIA and hacking into encrypted files! There was a lot of cloning, pushing, committing, merging, initializing, pulling, mind blowing stuff. Miss Grace was also very sweet. She listened and took time to explain. I wonder how TIIDELab gets their premium facilitators. It was a great experience.
However, everything started to unravel in week two. Along came Mr. Farouk Alogba. He introduced us to Data Structures and Algorithms. I was wowed. It was a very interesting lecture, but then in my mind I was like “what has this got to do with me being a coder? Leave mathematics and teach me how to press computer!” and then he spoke about readable and scalable codes, the muscles in my body relaxed. Then he went on to time and space complexity, and Big O Notation. Later that week, we were taught on Mastering and Acing technical Job Interview by Mr. Saheed Adepoju. It was insightful. Things I normally didn’t consider when applying for jobs were revealed to me. I now know how Eve must have felt when she ate the apple in the garden of Eden. I was loving it so far.
Then along came a Friday. The first physical meetup. I was going to meet other fellows based in Lagos for the first time. “Just act cool” I told myself. “Remember, breeze in breeze out” I reminded myself. Well, man proposes, God disposes. Before long I was enjoying the meetup, the games, the activities, it was all a rush. I was laughing hysterically, vibrating and clattering my teeth like someone who stepped on an electric wire! I got home 1:30am the next day. (Stay tuned for details about how this happened).
The next two weeks was all about HTML and CSS. “Familiar territory” I said to myself. I was shocked. Mr. Solomon Chokor schooled me, and revealed the depth of my ignorance. I learnt things, secrets, it was like I had been initiated into the inner room, a cult of HTML and CSS sages (ok the cult part is a little bit extreme), but you get what I mean. Within those weeks, after a lot of ‘flex-ing’ and ‘grid-ing’ and media-querying, I built my first anything in programming. Just 3weeks into the fellowship, and I had a portfolio website!
(Check it out in my git repository link posted at the end of this article).
Fridays are not just for ‘Electric shocking’ though, Big Brother (remember him?) teaches us a lot of other non-technical stuff. He’s so knowledgeable and vast and knows how to hold the audience to himself, almost like an enchantment. See why I said you should be afraid? Be afraid of his immense ability to guide and nurture as well as mete out discipline and rewards when deserved.
Week four, we had a visit from the founder of the TIIDELab initiative, in person of Mr. Kadir Salami. He spoke to us at length. A lot of wisdom came forth from the mouth of a man who I must say is well revered and respected by all those around him. One particular phrase stood out for me. “Put yourself out there” he said. “Celebrate your little wins” he added.
It was during the course of this session I began to question myself. Do I really want to be just a coder, or do I want to be a software engineer as Mr. Kadir said? Someone who solves problems, thinks deeper and does research to come up with solutions to real problems, or someone who can duplicate a website.
And so, I made up my mind! I don’t want to be JUST a coder; I want to be the full package!!
I have met many lovely people in the course of these 5 weeks, the tech support guys; Ayodele Samuel and Arimoro Lekan (our Lagos physical Friday meetups host/landlord), my coding partner Abraham Christopher, my team members; team Vanquishers; Opeyemi, Abdulroqeeb, Adeyemi, Ben, Daniel, Armstrong, Neefah, Mariam and Munirudeen; and every person in this fellowship both in Abuja and Lagos.
There’s so much to tell and best believe you’ll hear it all in due time. But for now, I’m continuing my journey not just to becoming a coder(spits) but to becoming a software engineer (smiles).
Please don’t forget to connect with me on my social links below.
Thank you for reading!!!
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/olatunde-adedayo-3b56a3139/
GitHub: github.com/daryoh
Facebook: facebook.com/Olatunde.Adedayo.Teslim/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/daryoh_/
Twitter: @daryoh_
