I started this year with the determination to focus fully on my path of becoming a front end developer. I watched series of tutorials and tons of articles but nothing clicked, instead, it seems like I was stuck in an infinite loop. Nothing seemed to be working, I felt maybe I wasn’t smart enough and the imposter syndrome begins to set in but then the thought of all the money I’ve spent on data kept me going(lol…… network providers are not friendly). I was just moving on with the flow in my life until COVID happened.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, so many people and organizations were giving out free resources to those who have been affected. Resources were flying all around twitter but I am always skeptical about applying because I am very scared of rejection (bad experiences from the past). But when I saw sultan of devcareers (I turn on my notifications for his post…….) put up a post on twitter saying he would like to support newbies during this pandemic by giving access to a private slack channel and also provide internet data for three months, I didn’t even think twice before I started replying his post. The instruction was to reply to his post by telling him how the plan would be of benefit to us and also attach any evidence of us learning how to code.
Fast forward to when he started picking people and I got a notification that I was picked, I was happy that one would have thought that I hit a jackpot.
THE FIRST PHASE OF THE PROGRAM.
For the first phase of the program, we were given individual task to carry out which was to replicate the landing page of a design. Prior to this time I had already started working with HTML,CSS and Javascript but I wanted to challenge myself to use bootstrap( a css framework) so as to make my work faster. I eventually did, even though it was not so good but I felt satisfied because I challenged myself to do something.
SECOND PHASE OF THE PROGRAM
The program started becoming tough because for the second phase we had to work in teams that I’m not used to. And to make matters worse, we had to pitch our speech to the team leads for them to pick us. I finally got into a team but worked had already begun and there was no task left except to restructure people’s code. I was overwhelmed because that was my first time working on someone’s code. It turned out fine eventually thanks to @james my co-team lead for putting me through. My team lead @yahaya also showed me how React works even though I didn’t have an idea on how it works, he still made sure I was following.
THIRD PHASE OF THE PROGRAM
This was the last phase of the program. It was the most exciting and frustrating phase of the program. We were grouped into another team again. This time we were all ladies (we nicknamed ourselves TEAM WONDER WOMEN)no team lead and we were supposed to do pair programming using VScode live share features. What this means is that I and someone will be working on a piece of code together. It was a mind-blowing experience, thanks to okoyecb for taking his time to put me through. feeohnah was my pair programming partner and she is a really cool person to work with. Most times we had to stay up late to work due to lack of power supply and bad network. I had other amazing teammates blessing (assistant trouble maker), @damilola(I call her dami full-stack, and yeah we’re namesake). It wasn't easy working with different people on a project especially when there’s no team lead to coordinate us, but it turned out fine.
WORKING WITH PROGATE
The progate platform is a very nice and friendly one. I would totally recommend it to anyone because it is beginner-friendly. Though it’s concept is simple but then it opened my eyes to a lot of things that were easily skipped in most tutorials.
LEARNING ON THE SLACK CHANNEL
Life on the slack channel was fun. There was never a dull moment, from playing games to football bants to subbing each other. It was the best three months of my life. We also had interactive sessions with professionals in the tech industry on the #ama channel. A big shoutout to okoyecb : our favorite trouble maker, he’s always coming up with things to keep us busy and he’s the best program manager you could ever wish for. Also a very big thank you to @sultan, Samson Goddy hoopsomuah and two other anons for the opportunity. It has been worth it. Thank you.