Coding is No Beans — One Week of Fun, Work and More Work At LearnFactory Nigeria
I first learnt about LearnFactory Nigeria through a Techpoint article about tech development in the Southeast and Aba in particular. This was around second week of December 2017, which coincided with the first major tech show in Aba “Aba Startupgrid. I planned to attend the event but missed it by a day as I got into Aba late.
But the event aroused my interest about what was happening in Aba tech scene. As fate will have it, I stumbled upon a Techpoint article while scrolling through my phone inside a keke on my way home from an errand earlier in the day. Reading through the article, I learnt more about Startup South event and then some notable names in Aba tech scene, one of which was Chibueze Ukaegbu’s inspired LearnFactory Nigeria.
I was so impressed with what I read that right inside the keke, I began googling “Chibueze Ukaegbu” and Learn Factory Nigeria. Getting home, I mentioned it to mum, refreshed and headed back towards Brass junction ( a major bus-stop along Aba Owerri Road), Aba to start a tour of my newly discovered Aba tech scene.
My first point of call was LearnFactory Nigeria. I spent a considerable amount of time with the manager Mr Matthew, who gave me a download of things happening within the space and their plans for 2018.
I took a quick mental scan of the surroundings and was quite impressed with what I saw and decide there and then to be part of their future. This was at the back of my mind as I made my way back to Lagos after the holidays.
Today I’m part of LearnFactory Nigeria 2018 Interns, on a six months journey to groom master software craftsmen and women. In the past few years since leaving school, I have found myself working on another side of IT which involved me building websites with mainly Content Management Systems ( WordPress ) aside working on SEO and Content Development and Marketing for Doers Technologies. At the last count I have worked on over 30 Websites till date; all using CMS which is all about to change with LearnFactory Nigeria 2018 Internship Program.
So far so good and the signs are there for what lies ahead of all of us in this journey.
First week at LearnFactory 2018 Internship have been fun, work and more work. It has been a whirlwind experience listening to the likes of Aniedi Udo-Obong, the Google Program Manager, Developer Ecosystem for Sub-Saharan Africa, Daniel Chinagozi, the founder of Innovation Growth Hub, series of life changing tips from Eric Thomas and Steve Harri’s Life is a week, who himself called in within the week to speak to us about our journey into discovery, performance and mastery. From listening to Steve on Rhythm 93.7 every evening as I journey back from work at Lagos Island to now seeing him call in and us asking him questions directly, I mean how can one describe that?
During this journey, we will be covering the following
Month 1 — Introduction, Tools Setup and Core JS
Month 2 — Building UI With React
Month 3 — Node.js, Express, Graphql, MongoDB
Month 4 — Mobile development, AWS and Google Cloud platform
Month 5 — Desktop development and Visualization
Month 6 — Alternative JS Frameworks and Final Project
This first week, we have gotten our hands dirty with Linux, Git, HTML5 and Bootstrap. This was to reinforce all that we leant via the program pre-requisites and covering other concepts along the way.
As a Microsoft Windows person, I wasn’t certain how the transition to Linux environment will turn out, having not worked with that platform before, neither have I really put GitHub to its proper use. It was a bit scary for me.
All these have been put to rest by LearnFactory’s amazing team. Now aside from the concepts of whatever I might have known previously about Linux environment (Ubuntu) and Git (GitHub), these I have taken a bit further by putting those concepts into practical use.
It’s obvious that the journey will get tougher as we enter another week of coding and character building. It will be a week of sleepless nights ( in the voice of our Chief CodeSmith Chibueze Ukaegbu ) but as we all know, the proof of desire, is in the pursuit.
For me, it’s time for sacrifice and time to pursue my desire.
