Software Development: Progressing from Average to World class
The Story of forLoop Warri Maiden Event
The first forLoop event held in Warri was lit. The six speakers who spoke at the meetup, delivered their talks with so much passion and energy that the whole place was covered with pepper stew, and our amazing audience got to learn practical steps to take in order to progress from an average developer to a world-class developer.
Talks
Our first speaker was Prince Darlington, developer of the popular PHP framework; Codefii. Darlington talked about the “Software Development Life Cycle” which are; Planning-Design Stage- Development- Testing- Deployment -Maintenance. He mentioned three models of client delivery (1) water form model : the client is only concerned about the final delivery (2) iteration: you develop to a stage, then test each stage with client (3) incremental model: the client wants to be carried along, he wants to see every single update. The speaker recommended Slack as one cool tool that developers can use to help update their client on projects.
Our second speaker was Benjamin Odumah (Beng) who spoke on “Must-have Skills to attaining World-class status as a Software Developer”. This maggi seasoned developer spoke about the importance of time management, communication and customer support in building projects for clients. He encouraged developers to go the extra mile to ensure they deliver on time, consistently to clients. He gave the following helpful tips; (i) Get a laptop with good batter life, not just good software specifications, it will help you cope with electricity challenge (ii) Find out what projects are on high demand and create a template for them ahead of any client. (iii) Design code base that can be easily reused. It helps you manage time better (iv) Continual feedback helps you understand your clients better, else you’ll deliver a medical website only to discover it was not a website for people, but a veteran website(for animals) (v) Factor in maintenance and customer support into your pricing and schedule
Kelvin Omereshone a full stack developer at mypadi.ng, spoke next on “Software Architecture and Documentation”. He recommended MVC as a good architecture for code. As for documentation, he said it’s like a recipe for a meal, anybody should be able to look at the items and resources and know how to cook that meal. He also added that the act of thinking and writing your documentation helps you understand your code better”
Peace Ojemeh a prolific designer at Sugar Labs came on stage next. And as usual, Peace delivered an unforgettable talk on “Designing Great Products and Open Source”. She helped her audience appreciate why they should pay attention to design process. “Your design should be so simple that the user should know what to do next without thinking” she says. More importantly, design is never complete if the user is not able to use it. So put all your potential users into considerations when designing. She also emphasized that Design and Functionality are inseparable.
After Perrie’s talk, we had a little break. And members of the audience had a great time networking, and engaging with some of the speakers
After the break, we listened to the Keynote Address, and our Keynote Speaker, the eloquent Sylvester Marquant did justice to the talk “The Value of World-class Developers to Tech Ecosystems”. Marquant left no stone unturned as he discusses the many benefits world-class developers brings to emerging ecosystems like the #WarriTechEcosystem. He referred to Prosper Otemuyiwa as good example of an African world-class developer and encouraged all to aspire for greatness.
The final talk of the day was a video recording by Ovie Prince Otega a seasoned software engineer with Alat.ng, Lagos. Tegaton spoke on “Ten Common Mistakes most Developers make and How to Avoid them”. This talk is a must-watch for every developer, newbie or expert.
Take Aways from the meetup
- Always aspire to greater heights in your chosen career as a software developer
- Continue to develop yourself, learn new skills, tools, but remember to go deep before going wide
- Learn the business side of software development, to better manage your clients.
- Give excellence at all times however small the pay
- Contribute to Open Source
- Follow great developers & soak yourself in Engineering blogs.
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