MY ALX SOFTWARE ENGINEERING JOURNEY: THREE THINGS YOU SHOULD LEARN FROM MY EXPERIENCE
It still feels like yesterday when I received the congratulatory mail confirming that I have been accepted to study Software Engineering under the ALX Africa and Holberton School. A journey of 13 months, from foundations to specializations and graduation. An exciting, but topsy-turvy journey that saw over 20,000 students in my cohort at the start of the program and just 500+ at the end of the journey.
The ALX program has a motto #DoHardThings, and the aim is to instill in young Africans the drive and zeal to use technology as a conduit for development and sustainable growth in the community and the world at large. Partnering with MasterCard, ALX trains thousands of youths every year in various key technological fields, including Software Engineering, Data Analytics, Data Science, etc. You can see more about them here.
A solid kick-start to a career launch into technology has to have a solid foundation, and that’s what ALX is all about. Here are three things every new student of the program should know in order to be successful and also stay relevant even after the program:
Keep Learning: ALX is fast-paced, as it is a 12-months program that aims to provide a solid foundation in software engineering. One key takeaway is that you should never grow weary of learning. The topics that range from low-level programming, higher-level programming, DevOps, networking, systems administration are there to give you an insight into the vast space called software Engineering. You should never stop there though, but develop a hunger to improve yourself and enhance your abilities.
Your Peers are everything: The ALX program works through a collaborative and shared learning process with no native instructors or teachers, but technical mentors and your fellow peers. One of the most vital ways to ensure that you have a successful period during the program and even after it is to partake fully and involve yourself in peer-learning days. This collaborative teaching model helps break down the veil of teacher-student bureaucracy and allows complex concepts to be broken down into the form that can be readily grasped by the students.
Total Understanding beats Speed: Speed in delivery is an essential attribute of any software development process, but as it concerns this program, you will soon come to realize that it is better to fully understand the concept before you jump into coding. As a peer once told me, “programming should be 70% understanding the problem and 30% coding of the actual solution”.
Do not be in a haste to finish the tasks as this will only lead to frustration in the long run when the errors and bugs start coming. The program is even designed to support you, you can do tasks at your own pace, and there are two deadlines: you get graded over 100% during the first window, over 65% if you miss the first and over 50% if you miss the two. Meaning students can always go back to difficult projects and work on them even after missing both deadlines.
These three things, if not anything, will ensure that you have a good and successful journey which will eventually spill into your career path as well in Software Engineering.