The Intern Files: Barnabas Chimaobi
My name is Matthew Barnabas Chimaobi. I hail Amankalu Alayi in Bende LGA of Abia State. I was born in a Christian family of 7 belonging to Enyinnaya Matthew Chukwu.
Personal story and Academic Background:
After my basic education, my parents saw my technical skills and thought it would be good for me to get a technical education. So in 2005 I got admitted at Boys’ Technical College Aba where I completed my technical school education in Electrical Installation craft. In the year 2010, I started doing some menial jobs and electrical wiring of houses in order to raise some money that will enable me go further academically since my family was limited materially. So in 2012, I gained admission into Akanu Ibiam Federal Polytechnic, Unwana, Ebonyi State to study Electrical Electronic Engineering Technology in a quest to become more relevant in Electrical Technology, where I bagged an upper credit grade level of 3.26 CGPA . During my national assignment I was certified as a HSE officer.
The Road Leading to LearnFactory:
During my undergraduate studies, not too many of our lecturers know anything about programming, and for the only ones that know I see them as gods. At times I wonder if I could ever learn programming. So to that end, I stumbled into some programming languages like C++, C-language etc passively as something that I simply need to pass on to the next level. I even told myself that it’s not going to be possible and even if it will be possible, it will cost me a lot of money, perhaps travel outside the country to get it. Little did I know that I will one day live and drink it, eat it at a platter of gold.
On 29th of March 2019, everything changed. I received a call from my uncle in Lagos that there is a free 6 months internship he wants me to apply. He told me that it’s about software development at LearnFactory Nigeria in Aba. I was surprised that I have always been in Aba but never heard anything about this glorious firm called LearnFactory Nigeria and someone in Lagos is now referring it to me. Thanks to the power of information through internet and social media, maybe I still would not have known about it if not that he saw it there.
I was very skeptical about the move to the internship looking at my undergraduate experience with programming courses. But I will say that fortunately I decided to suppress the pessimistic and negative view I had for programming, mustered up courage and gave the internship a trial, and the trial was worth it. Today, in just three months I have learnt a whole lot of things in programming and software development, courtesy of LearnFactory’s wonderful instructors.
My achievements for just giving the LearnFactory internship a trial include:
1. Good knowledge of HTML5 and CSS3
2. Good knowledge of JavaScript
3. Good knowledge of React and React-Native
4. I have already launched my first web application and website built with React and hosted on Zeit Now.
5. I will soon launch my mobile application that I am currently building with React-Native.
6. Plus the so many Iam going to learn in the next three months.
The following are links to my Github account and hosted projects:
@Barnabas-Chimaobi => github account
https://my-todo-app.barnabas-chimaobi.now.sh => Todo WebApp
The amazing thing about all of these is that the LearnFactory Internship has been free and completely free. Very rare of it’s kind. My LearnFactory Nigeria experience has abated my fear and feelings for programming that I can see myself becoming a world class software developer. If I had known about all these earlier, it would have been a better skill course to follow before thinking of higher education.
So that is my story, from an Electrical Engineer (power and machines) to becoming a world class software developer, and as you can see everything about me has always been technology.
The next time you think about programming and development, LearnFactory Nigeria will be a very good place to start.
“The admin of the class. Barnabas is someone to be described as administrative. Very principled and not short of humility. What will draw you close to him is his unwavering desire to know, to teach others and to put the class in order. He is the defacto person to be likened as the prefect of the cohort.
When the journey gets tough, he admits of the boisterous wind but he will not give up. Here and there you will see him confiding in his fellow interns to understand the concept which seemed like a challenge to him. It will not be long to see him beaming with smiles of success, having trashed the bug. A true leader indeed, he took his team to build awesome things in their just concluded Jumia clone project.” Ugwuanyi Chidera
Someone to watch out for; I am very confident he is going places.
iC
Chief CodeSmith
