Most of my articles point to technical aid and some others are pointers on how to grow in the tech industry. As at the time I started my career in 2013, I had no idea whatsoever what software engineering meant. I had a friend who introduced me to w3schools(Theophilus Omoregbee) and from the things he showed me, I started to practice and I was super excited that I could write a piece of code on my notepad(HTML) and then see it run on my browser.

It was an amazing experience!

That outburst of excitement kept me going on and on from one level to another, I started by learning HTML and its tags and then I decided to give my skeleton a body by learning CSS and the likes.

At this time, programming seemed like it wasn't a thing for women. It was engineering and in this part of the world, engineering was meant for men only and I'm guessing that's because people feel that women couldn't do the heavy lifting and deep thinking ( c'mon we aren't that dumb!!! )

Apparently it seemed like I was the only woman struggling to get into the tech space and on the other hand, I basically loved what I was doing because it was fun, it was different, I felt like a genius!

Eventually, all that exhilaration began to dwindle when it dawned on me that I was "just a woman" and that this new life could rob me of time with family, school work, social life, friends, enjoyment(Lao Lao in Yoruba) and all the other things I naturally loved to do. I had to quit in 2014 and tried to be a normal girl but that didn't last for long...

I knew I was missing something... it was Engineering!

I couldn't help but continue in 2015 and this time I decided to learn a programming language (PHP) and I could make my static web pages dynamic with procedural PHP, interact with a database and perform basic CRUD operations. I can't begin to imagine the amount of Dopamine released in my brain as a result.

Fast forward to 2016, a year later, I got a job in a tech solution company as a junior software developer and I started making a few bucks from what seemed like a joke initially and I progressively began to put into productive use, the things I had learnt the year before and I wrote my first proper application. It was a staff management application which had the basic functionalities of modern-day slack which was meant for company internal use. Next, I built an e-commerce website for selling books and gradually, I began to figure out what I wanted.

In all of this, there were times when I was afraid of my own shadow, I felt I wasn't good enough, I felt I didn't know enough, I heard a lot of technical Jargons from senior colleagues that made me feel the journey was too long for me to start and that other people had gone far ahead of me... those newsletters gave me the heebie-jeebies, I felt intimidated in the midst of other devs, but I kept at it. I didn't give up.

The essence of narrating this whole experience is to make you...YES, YOU! as a newbie reading this, understand that you don't have to put yourself under any form or sort of undue unnecessary pressure to impress anyone. Keep at it, one stone on another until you get to your destination.

Secondly, you need to note that you can't and will never figure it out completely. Every new stage opens you up to new technologies, ideas and opportunities. So don't take your growth process for granted. Don't sell yourself short at the same time, celebrate your small wins, no matter how little you think it is or how insignificant other devs think it is.

Get ready for the overzealous devs who would likely want to push their ideas and style into your head - pick what you need from them and move on. Know what you want and do not be tossed around by frameworks and unimportant things...Focus on the important and do what makes you happy, try to do something meaningful every day, find a mentor if you have to(I think it might be very helpful).

Procrastination is the thief of time -Edward Young

Finally, do not forsake the congregation of other developers because, like it or not, it is the fastest way to grow as a developer. You will make tremendous progress within a short time as a result of exposure to the right information, tools and ideas.

Shoot me an email @ info.durucynthia@gmail.com