Code Like Her Fellowship, week #2
by Srijana Thulung
I always wanted to become a software engineer, that is why I decided to study IT Engineering at Nepal College of Information Technology. In April 2017, right after my graduation, I had to rush back to my hometown in Jhapa due to a family emergency where I had to be for three years. And when I returned back, I realized that three years is a long time, but I was still looking for vacancies to pursue a career in software engineering. And so, I applied to more than twenty companies and was called for interviews in seven places. But, I was rejected by all of them. Rejection didn’t feel good. But the underlying truth was that I was technically incompetent. I didn’t have a sound background in programming.
To develop relevant skills that employers were looking for, I decided to invest a few hours of my time daily studying courses offered by Udemy and EdX. However, I could not relate to the online learning where I did not have a sense of community and belonging. Also, I did not find the instant help I was looking for whenever I was unable to make progress. During this struggle, ‘Code Like Her’ fellowship came as an opportunity that I didn’t know I was looking for. I was excited after my selection in the fellowship. However, due to the recent Corona outbreak, the training was uncertain. It was a relief when I came to know about the possibility of the fellowship as an online rather than in-person training.
Week 2 started with the basics of HTML such as elements, tags, and attributes. During the classes, we were frequently tested with relevant questions which I have been answering pretty well. I feel confident at the end of each class. I like that the web design course didn’t dive into coding directly. Rather we understood the basics of web designing and the importance of layout breakdown first. We also learned about the fundamentals of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) like the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) concept, floats, clearfix, positing, styling techniques in CSS.
As an assignment during the week, we had a layout breakdown of one of the most popular social media sites, Facebook. We were also introduced to this wonderful design tool called Figma, which I came to know is essential for both developers and designers. I learned that ‘Time estimation’ is a key skill for any developer, we were taught how to allocate time for a coding project before writing any code. The calculation was based on our individual capacity and working hours. I feel fortunate enough to be armed with the tricks and concepts up in my sleeves.
Towards the end of the week, we were introduced to setting up a GitHub account, and I learned how to push the code to Github. Not only did I learn Github practically, but I also got to know how GitHub works. On the last day, we were given a weekly assignment in which we had to replicate/ recreate a website by starting with its layout breakdown.
I really cannot put into words everything I’ve felt during this week. It was an amazing experience. I am hopeful this opportunity provided by Code Rush will help me thrive professionally. I look forward to much more.
Happy coding!
About the Author:
Srijana Thulung completed her Bachelor’s degree in IT Engineering from NCIT. She is an aspiring Software Engineer. Srijana loves cooking, playing guitar, and swimming.
