My Journey as a Developer

Hello there, I'm kluivert, a student and an Android developer from Nigeria. I started programming in 2016, however my journey to being an Android developer started in 2017. I learnt Java for 5 months before starting Android, I still remember the YouTube channels that helped me, they are "NewBoston, ProgrammingKnowledge and Duckacademy(a website).". They taught me from scratch, programming was more than just code to me, the idea that I could build awesome things right on my computer was exhilarating and thus my passion grew more and more. I created several teams although they all fell apart due to no funding and me being less experienced. When I entered the University, I was really happy to build something for my school since not very many people knew or had interest in programming, I met a lot of wonderful people in my first year, the likes of Victor (the first Android developer I met in person), Kevwe (web developer with great ideas) , Tammy (talented designer and developer) and of course others who didn't know how to code but loved technology. I was still a beginner though when I built my first app, it was a quiz app for my school, Victor later joined the project.

When I think about the app's code base, I wanna cry cause it was really crazy that I wrote that code, i mean crazy in a bad way but anyway learning is an everyday thing, I'm glad I'm better today. My journey as an Android developer has been exciting, sad and filled with passion. I recall getting a new laptop and a firm I wanted to work with requested that I use Linux but stubborn me couldn't leave windows at the time cause I felt Linux was hard, however i use Linux mint today after understanding how cool it is and also after windows messed up a project i was about completing. Funny right?.

Going to the hub more often for meet ups was a practice I started in my second year, Victor and I went to almost every meet up together and of course every meet up was awesome. Ken Saro wiwa innovation hub is the hub I have visited the most, an amazing hub and the hub I'm most familiar with, the manager and other leads are doing an amazing job putting together the tech community.

I taught few people programming and became a mentor at the Alc 4.0 program, it was a wonderful experience meeting newbies with the passion for knowledge and meeting awesome developers too, one of those people I met was Wisdom and Jason. I understand you don't know any of them but I mention names anyway so you don't get confused with the story. Wisdom gave me insights to developer community, what I should learn and how I should build myself and other important things. My first official job came through wisdom, I'll forever be grateful for that(always) and although the experience wasn't how I expected, I'm still glad it helped me develop myself even more.

The journey of a developer isn't easy, there's always something new to learn every day, a better approach, plugin, language or software. There's always something new and thus you constantly have to learn and practice. Over the course of my journey since i got my first project, I have sent over a 100 applications and even Dev.to is amongst those applications, no exaggeration, a lot of rejection and reasons why they've decided to move on and even some that won't even get back to you. Lol. It's been absolutely frustrating but still this is a journey not a destination, just cause it's rough today doesn't mean it'll always be. I started programming cause I love it not cause of the money and besides i have people to prove wrong as well, so it's forward always, continue learning and getting better until the testimony.

So dear devs looking for a job but still haven't found one, don't give up, keep being awesome with committing and pushing, writing better codes, learning more and being a better developer. It'll be fine. Passion first, if you don't love what you do, you won't give your best, so keep loving being a developer and even if you can't build awesome things, build the small things in an awesome way.

Stay safe guys...