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| Learning how to program |
One day I was watching some random YouTube videos about programming and how to learn to program the right way. While navigating through the various channels, I saw one video of a programmer who claims to have learned how to program at the age of nine, I was so amazed as to how some people are so lucky to be exposed in such awesome skills at such young age. I was 27 years at that time with more than three years since I finished my bachelor's degree in Information and Communication Technology, yeah! yeah! I know by now you started asking yourself how this poor guy completed a bachelor's degree in ICT and doesn't even know how to program? the thing is I had very little knowledge about programming languages and how to program in general. Throughout all four years of my degree, I had only one class on fundamental to programming with Pascal programming language. Truth to be told from the way I was taught this subject, I failed to develop an interest in programming/software development, my interest was in computer networking and systems administration to the point of managing to land a job as Computer Systems Administrator at a University only four months after I have completed my Degree.
How in the world I wanted to become a software developer after three years of working as Systems/Network Administrator, well the answer is I wanted to have my own android application that can be used to facilitate data collection for my Master's Degree Dissertation. Fortunately, during my coursework time in the first year of Masters of Science in Computer Science, I was exposed to various programming classes like Object-Oriented Programming with Java and also Web Programming Languages like JavaScript and PHP. I had other classes related to software design and development, but for sure since that was like I was introduced to serious programming it was not easy to take all those classes plus other classes like Artificial intelligence in just one semester. Against all odds, I manage to complete the course work and started (again) to learn Java seriously for my research project. At first, I was struggling since I did not know the right way to learn how to program as a result I was locked in the endless loop of tutorials and not managed to come up with any useful software of my own. I know most of us have experienced that, taking a tutorial class for three to five weeks and then failed to develop the software of your own.
So how did I managed to break out the tutorial loop and managed to develop my android application for my research project? well, at first I was very confused and I did not know what to do, that is why I decided to search for refuge in YouTube videos, checking for anyone who managed to overcome the situation like mine. Eventually, I stopped taking tutorials, since I already had all the basics I decided to start small, implementing simple CRUD functionality to cover some of the features of my android app. After struggling for a week plus countless mistakes and google search I managed to implement basic CRUD and went on for login, register, and logging out. It was very challenging, sometimes I questioned myself if programming was my thing at all, but since I had no option and no one to help only google search and youtube, after two weeks I managed to implement the other features. At this time I had the application that users can register, logging, logout, create posts, read posts, update as well as delete posts, looks like I was good to go ahh!, not at the level I was looking for. The application was supposed to have some other features like notifications (including SMS and Email notifications) and I did not know how I can add all those features, but again after struggling for almost two and half months I managed to poorly implement all the features and I had a complete, not pretty but functional mobile app.
Although it was a painful journey I had a very awesome experience. Now four years later, I have managed to join the software development team in my organization as backend developer. I know how to program using various programming languages like python, java, javascript as well PHP. I have managed to implement various solutions and application to facilitate university internal operations, it has become very easy for me right now to pick up any programming language and complete a project of any size. My take in this blog article is that if you are struggling to learn any things new especially any practical skills like programming/software development the first thing and important one is to make sure that you nail all the basic and fundamental concept of the language, then don't waste more time in tutorials just pick a project and start implementing simple features. As time goes you may start to implement more advanced features that involve the advanced implementation of logics and language concepts, trust me with practice you may learn a lot in a very short time.
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