This bootcamp had participants from different neighboring countries like Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda,Kenya and Rwanda hosted them, being with community like this with different education background, culture and language but with the same goal of becoming world class developers was a very fantastic experience and inspired me to work hard as I could, being always surrounded by colleagues with skills in development increased my eager to learn as in every discussion I would get something new from a colleague and this contribute to my long term goal in career of becoming an exceptional software developer.

As Edward Everett Hale said”coming together is a beginning keeping together is progress; working together is success”.

As developer community we share this opportunity of being together and work on the same project with a limited time of 2 weeks at the same place, and I am very sure contacts made within Andela bootcamp will have positive impact in the future. The collaboration I see among us even if it is the first time we met convinced me again how Andela is a very wonderful opportunity.

we use this opportunity of being together to share our different opinions and ideas to collaborate for ease of implementation of the task we’ve been given and I become more proud of not being alone in room with computer light.

While I have been an avid reader of blog posts, I never wrote one but during this period I really liked the experience of writing one

I liked to read blogpost since 2016, I was wondering how is done, where the inspiration comes from to take the time and write article, but in bootcamp we spend first week writing one article every day and while it was a challenge, I really enjoyed the experience and will keep it among my habits .

As experienced developer in other programming language I’ve been using,I use this time to help others where they are stuck to move on quickly without waste of time, and when I’m stuck I don’t feel alone because I’m with others I don’t spend much time fixing bug, we’ve been introduced to developer community platform to collaborate I request support where I’m stuck in a few minute I get response of how to solve the issue

I experienced that in this life to achieve something you have to work for it ,we was working on project almost a month, I thought that I had good progress as my code were running as it was intended, our learning facilitator give me feedback of what to correct ,I correct it and think it’s over after he reviewed it again ,give me other feedback I should work on, that time I felt like this project will not be complete, when he gave me feedback saying that each sentence should be started with capital letter, I started to think that they do not tolerate even on minor thing, later I realized that they are teaching us to look in each corner that may dissatisfy our customer so that handle them before.

Prior to this experience, I thought as developer I will be dealing with a computer, I didn’t understand cleary the customer side and that a good documentation and story make a perfect software, Our learning facilitator inspired me when he was giving me feedback to correct such capital case, blank line between functions, that I could be experienced engineers once I train myself to the advice and feedback he is giving me to develop valuable product, by considering every little thing as it can devalue my work.

I’ve interacted with different tools and technologies that we’ve been asked to be familiar with like:

Version control system that enable collaboration, track changes and continuous review to measure progress of project development.

Project management tools: that helps in requirement specification and measure progress based on feature have been delivered and those not yet finished.

JavaScript Frameworks: Express that helps to develop API in Node Js.

What interested me so much was Version control system I interacted with Github and project management tool (Pivotal tracker) .

In the past I have used GitHub for a limited time and I didn’t have much experience in it, how it enable teams to collaborate, discuss to the changes done and what might be changed, but during my preparation I understood the concept of version control system.

After I understood the concept and started to use GitHub for collaboration and track changes, it reminded me the time I was with my colleague collaborating on a project during the event that was prepared by Bank of Kigali (BK) at the end of 2018, we were using single branch at the same time, once we were going to merge our changes, we were struggling with conflicts sometime revert changes and we start again coding missed features.

But today I am collaborating with my team mates during boot camp, reviewing each other’s Pull request before merge, even when I am merging my changes there no more conflicts and if there are I am able handle it.

Project Management Tool (Pivotal Tracker)

Since my first days as software developer, I have been using Paper Notebooks, Sticky notes to write stories I’ll be working on, I didn’t realize that there are tools that can be used to monitor and prioritize features and change the status based on the progress.

One day I reflected on my work to measure the progress of what I wanted to achieve vs what was achieved I realized that it was too difficult to measure progress of my work as I was developing several project and using different tools, some of papers that contained requirements to work on were damaged others I forgot where I kept them, from that time I decided to start a new project to develop myself a software that would help me to measure progress of project I’m working on and used that techniques as the best way to learn Java.

I wanted it to help me track each and everything project that I would need from gathering requirements to software deployment like Budget needed and where it will come from, support where needed might be specified, business plan for the project being developed, and other expenses on it.

Fortunately I got an email of tools we should be familiar with and I was so excited to see that there are project management tools that can be used to achieve the result I wanted , from that time I have been so excited to try it out,

I tried to read about it before I can use it, I started to apply the skills I got after reading how to use it, my first project using this tools was to develop user interface template without any CSS or JavaScript Framework.

After I wrote stories on what to be covered during coding, I started coding making reference to the story and surely it simplified development, there were no more confusion of what feature would be next up to completion.

Version control system and Project management tools reduced difficulties of collaborating with others, story writing and project development progress monitoring and I am very thankful to Andela that introduced me to those wonderful tools.

Excellence

Every time I hear about Excellence, I think on the Aristotle quote “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives — choice, not chance, determines your destiny.”

From the above quote, in my daily activities as software developer, I put hard work and deliberate practice first as a way toward excellence.

I develop Excellence by knowing that things everyday changes that’s why I understand that there is a person next to me one single step from my position I ask when I need help, understand that time management is essential in our daily activities and learn continuously as the world changes I upgrade to stay informed and the best version of myself.

Passion

I strongly believe that loving what I do I achieve more and when I devote myself to the work with whole heart I achieve success, since early age I liked software development, have been passionate about it that it never seemed to be work for me, I should spend hours coding without feeling tired or bored because I like it and this way I can say it is my passion.

Integrity

Integrity in everyday life especially in a community is very helpful to gain the trust of others, in my line of work being a person with integrity allows me to work with different person, different background and to work as a team I chose to be open to others to share my point of view to help them improve the work, even during conflict for a resolution I testify honestly what the problem and propose how can we resolve it in the way that add us value everyone and our work.

As a software developer, in some projects I may have access to confidential data of a company, even if some non-disclosure agreement helps company ensuring there might be legal pursuit in case of contract breach to make sure person won’t do things that can harm an employer, colleague or client.

As warren buffet said “in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” A very skilled software engineer without integrity may add some malicious code to software he created. For any working area Integrity is key to success and is required especially to software developer.

Collaboration

Collaboration is essential in a field of development,Most of the time there are large software to be developed that can’t be developed by one software developer.

In most of real world scenarios a software development project will require a team of developers and non-developer working hand in hand for the completion of the project. collaboration with others is key to being an excellent software developer and help in sharpening skills as by collaborating with others you learn a lot from them on the way of handling issues or solving complex situation.

In 2017,I was hired to collaborate to a development of a web application of one local university I was familiar with java as programming language they were using, but not familiar with Framework that in order to use the same standards, I asked for help to one of the Team member who seemed to know the framework very well and was rapidly helped and carried on the development work, that time I did realize how collaboration in a team player helps in achieving result quickly.

Recently in October 2018, I participated in a hackathon that were organized by the AfricaGen in partnership with Rwanda Information Society Authority (RISA), we were given the task to perform transaction using blockchain, most of teams were stuck at creation of token that was failing, after several attempts I was able to find a way to overcome that issue, I then passed in remaining groups showing them how to solve the issue, at that time I was only doing what I thought was right without any expectation of a reward, sharing and helping others in need as I strongly believe it to be one of the core missions on earth and was given the award among best performers because of the attitude of helping other Teams.

During the path toward my goal of becoming an exceptional software developer, I’ve faced so many challenges that I overcome via discipline and deliberate practice as a way to achieve mastery and integrate elite in software development,.

Before developing the subject let first define Growth Mindset “Growth Mindset: people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work — brains and talent are just the starting point” Dweck said.

To me I define growth mindset as the beliefs that whatever I can think of and act intelligently to achieve it, I will accomplish it” I strongly believe that result comes from Brainstorming, Hardworking and Persistence we apply to the blockers or challenges we meet in every area of life (studies, work…). From the persistence, patience and hardworking we learn lessons and experience that contribute to the growth mindset.

Now that growth mindset have been define let go straight to the deep of our subject. At the time I am writing this article it is my first time to attend Andela Kigali bootcamp Cycle 6, but it’s the 4th time I’ve applied to andela, you may wonder what happened the first three times? Was I rejected, Didn’t participate? You will find in following paragraphs responses to above question and how faced challenges contributed to growth of mindset.

From its beginning to Rwanda I’ve applied but as I was familiar with local software competitions, I expected it to be the same, but Andela’s selection process was so challenging and totally different to other applications I’ve previously participated into and because of their long and strong selection process I quitted 2 times during technical assessment and was rejected once.

I decided not to re-apply again and think on what I really wanted in life. after one cycle without my application I was then sure that I wanted nothing else in the world that being part of world class software developers and started to view andela as a possible channel toward the achievement of my goal, I then decided to get prepared well to have skills required to pass, I made a self-learning schedule to practice daily at least for three hours.

That time I was using PHP for Web application and Java for developing android application, I used JavaScript for a little. During the first weeks of my self-learning experience I decided to start with technologies that I was not familiar with like Version control system, Test Driven Development and Introduction to ES6 I was using ES5.

It was one of the toughest situation I faced because I am a student at one of local colleges,and needed to continue my studies as well also continue to prepare myself to becoming an Andelan,it required more management on how I spend my time.

I did not only get challenged by the learning experience but was challenged also by other participation in different hackathons, last year in 2018 I participated in a Blockchain hackathon working on challenges assigned to each team, I spent 5 hours working on it tirelessly, no reward was expected but I couldn’t give up because I knew that to win I have to keep trying, I faced an issue and my token would not be validated to make transaction while it was already generated, but because of the Persistence and eagerness to learn and gain new skills I kept trying and changing codes for many alternatives but result remain the same, I took 15minutes to refresh and went outside the room to breathe fresh air and when I came back I was able to solve the error, one of my colleague who faced the same token issue surrendered and on the second day he didn’t attend.

From this I experience, I made my mind clear that I will keep trying no matter what Below are other lessons and experience learnt from Challenging Learning experience for both my career and studies:

1. I learned that skills are developed and improved As a self-taught programmer I spent 3 years developing personal projects and contributing freely in other projects as a way to improve my skills, and in each new project I must add something that I didn’t know, to train myself for research and hardworking to improve my capacity
2. I no longer fear challenges and Experience, I embrace them as a way of learning
3. Rather than being at one point and do things like you did it last 1 or 2 years because it is easy to repeat, I learn how to do things differently with efficiency and learn how I manage changing working environment because my boss will not remain the same or even my customers they will not treat
   me the same so I have to adopt quickly and respond to the changes positively that lead you to growth mindset
4. I will always take mistake as opportunity to correct, sharpen and act creatively to improve. In most IT or Programming related activities it will not work always as you wanted at the first try you will go through trial stages and if you persist it contribute to growth of mindset and you will know that you are constantly striving for improvement that will lead to your excellence.
5. Last but not least, I learned to be inspired by action of others instead of being jealous, I welcome the opinions of others and share positively my comment or your point of view about their work to them to help each other and grow together as team.

As conclusion of the learnt lessons, I will perform deliberate practice to improve both my technical and communications skills.