A diverse group of individuals tell us how they began their career in programming. Read them here.
Seun Martins shares his story.
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Seun Martins
The first time, I had a computer to myself for hours at a stretch, was when my sister got a Windows desktop computer for an IT program she was taking. I was a sophomore then, and my school was on an ASUU strike.
I found myself on it hours after hours – opening all the packages on it, trying out all the stuffs I had been taught via the chalkboard while in secondary school. I was hooked.
We also got access to the internet, which gave me access to blogs amongst other resources. One particular blog, I read at the time, was stevepavlina.com – a blog on personal development. It was quite popular, and the owner claims to be making six figure income from the blog. That sounded unbelievable then, and I thought of starting one.
I read about how blogging works, how blogs get monetized, blogging softwares and all sorts. I created a blog with Blogger, but I wasn’t satisfied with the look and feel of the site. I wanted to customize the blog to my liking. Then I started thinking: how do these websites/blogs get created? What is running under the hood? Can I be a part of the people creating stuffs that run on the web?
I started reading all I could find about how the web and websites work. I read about HTML and CSS, downloaded e-books and talked to people who claimed to know how to build websites. It turned out it wasn’t an easy one-week task, but I just kept immersing myself into it as if I’d been bitten by a bug.
School resumed again, and I had to go back to my Pharmacology classes. I quietly cried as I packed my bags as I couldn’t just pack. I wished I was able to pack my sister’s PC into my bag so I could continue learning to code while in school. My classes became even more boring as my mind kept going back to all I learned during the ASUU strike. I would reread the notes I took while I had access to the computer because they were all I had available. Anytime I had extra cash on me, I’d go into a cyber cafe to be able house the internet to learn more but that wasn’t very sustainable for me.
The more time went by without me doing stuffs on a computer, the more I disliked the other things I was doing. And that went on for some months to a point that I decided I was going to go fully into programming. I’d beg my friends who owned laptops to allow me use it for some hours while I was saving up money to buy my own.
After some time, which was a long time in “passion land”, I got my computer and got back to the journey of learning. I started reading all I could find online, and I created some dummy websites in the process. I moved into more JavaScript and PHP, and that’s when things began to get a little more compIex. I reached out to some developers online for advice so I could better structure my learning.
Then along the line I got into Andela, and now that initial question, which struck me, has an answer. Can I be a part of the people creating software that runs on the web? Hell, yes. I’m now part of the people making software that helps people, connects them and get work done.
Currently, I’m a Full Stack Javascript Developer working on the latest cutting edge tools of the web.
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Seun (@impactmass) is a MEAN stack developer currently working at Andela.
Do you want to share how you got started coding and your experience so far? Go HERE to see how to do it.
Photograph: Mohini Ufeli
