My First Week at DevCareers
It all started with a single tweet by Sultan, and now we are here.
Many talented young people of African origin are filled with so much passion and ideas which has the potential of becoming the next big thing in the tech ecosystem, and could contribute to the much needed technological advancement of the black continent and the whole world at large. But, for many social challenges — stable electricity, access to good internet connection, inability to procure a good laptop computer and most importantly, lack of mentor-ship — these would be brilliant minds were never discovered. Sad!
This is where #laptops4developers comes in. This is an initiative of the DevCareers’ team, being lead by the vibrant Sultan. As a Non-Profit organization that’s focused on supporting budding developers on their journey of becoming professional software engineer, #laptops4developers provides solution to these aforementioned problems by providing selected candidates with a conducive working environment and all things and everything needed to aid their learning while mentoring them through series of already paid online programming courses on their chosen tech field(s).
What I have learnt
As one of the twenty-two beneficiaries of the first cohort of DevCareers’ #laptops4developers program, this last one week has been the most transformative in my learning history. Am I exaggerating? Definitely not. Consider this (bearing in mind that I have close to zero prior knowledge of Node.js or git). In one week:
- I have mastered how to create, fork, clone, push and pull a git repository.
- I can now create and checkout to a branch, commit all changes and create a pull request to the master branch.
- I learnt how to create a project in Node.js using Node Package Manager (npm).
- I made five commits on a simple Node.js web server I built from scratch. You can check it out here.
- I was introduced to developers [communication] tools like slack, Pivotal Tracker, Trello and Medium.
My Goal for the next one week
Haven achieved this lot in a space of one week, I am confident that subsequent weeks will be much productive. There is no relenting yet. For this coming week, my goal is to:
- Brush up my Javascript knowledge by researching more on the language’s documentations.
- Learn some algorithms for performing common tasks.
- Learn the fundamentals of building Node.js web servers using express.js framework.
- Perform any other task(s) that might be given by my mentor, Everistus Olumese.
More importantly, DevCareer has linked me up with brilliant minds in form of teammates (the likes of Desmond Edem, Ajeigbe John O., Olomitutu Olufemi, AYOMIKUN EMMANUEL, Akinsoji Hammed Adisa, Temiloluwa Abiodun-Ojo, Temiloluwa Abiodun-Ojo, Hajarah Olamide, Osunkunle Olanrewaju, @azeezat ) whom are all sources of inspiration to me.
I cannot close this article without appreciating the organizers of such a life changing program. This is a pure act of service to humanity, and can only be thought of by individuals with a pure and genuine desire to impact lives positively without seeking personal gains.
This would not have been possible without the efforts of Sultan, Chidi Bartholomew Okoye, Olagoke Tobi Enoch and my mentor Everistus Olumese . We owe every of our achievements to you all.
Also to our host, hub67 (twitter: @hub67nigeria), thank you for providing us with such a conducive working space.
Follow me on twitter @MercyTunde
Follow DevCareer on twitter @dev_careers
