I started my Programming journey in 2019 and almost immediately, I got so addicted to it. Back then, I got involved in any opportunity to code, after classes, during breaks, at night, before going to bed, I just wanted to sit with my laptop and code. At some point, other responsibilities came up and I eventually had to learn at a very slow pace. Sometimes, the vibe to code came but I was just so inconsistent. Yet, the desire to code was still in my heart.
Earlier this year, I decided to take it seriously. Even though I had to take time out to prepare my ICAN professional examination, I picked it up again afterwards with so much enthusiasm. Before this time, I had watched several tutorial videos and learnt the basics of programming. I then decided to take the bull by the horn and apply what I learnt so far.
(For those of you that don’t know how to apply what you are learning with programming, my next blog post will be for you!)
Moving further, I sought ways to apply what I had learnt and in the quest to do so, a friend introduced me to an internship program which I applied for. It was quite good. The program opened my eyes to new concepts and helped me in certain measures. Yet, the program made me realize the need for a community because we were not provided with a platform where we could interact. The mentor appointed to us had a lot of interns under him such that he couldn’t attend to our questions which made me struggle for a while. I know you might ask why I didn’t use google, right? Well, for a person like me who was still trying to be stable, I did my best to surf the internet for solutions but it became exhausting after a while. Most times, I asked my friend and we would brainstorm together. Because of this, I believe that in learning programming, you can not afford to be a lone ranger, you need a community at least. Especially with that issue of debugging..pweeh. Having others check through your code would help you with that error code you’ve struggled with for hours or even days. (Debugging means searching for errors in your code and removing them. )
This is one hack you can take home from this post, especially for programmers who are newbies. Get a community and be a part of it. It doesn’t necessarily have to be official, it may just be a group of people who are enthusiastic about programming just as you are and you guys can learn and grow together.
I am currently a part of a community called Women in Data Science, Ife(WiDS). It is an initiative of the Data Science Nigeria Group which aims to inspire and educate data scientists and support women in the field.
It has been a great community such that it includes an incredibly diverse group of people from fields and domains. We share materials and relevant resources and articles, help the newbies among us, we’ve also had competitions too. We recently concluded an online conference, where we had speakers from different parts of the world, speak on various subjects ranging from ‘ Getting Started with Data Science using Microsoft tools ’, to ‘ Solving Problems with the EPIC technique ’, to ‘ Data Science as a 21st-century tool ’. It was such an enlightening time for me and others also.
As a big fan of community, I appreciate the moments, the vibes, the intelligence, and positive energy, the shared support and the diversity, that comes with being an active member of a community.
I do hope you enjoyed reading this post. This is my first post and I will not mind if you show me some love with your claps and comments below. Also, I’m open to your opinions and suggestions on how to serve you better with my blog posts especially in regards to Programming, Data Science, Tech, and Life in general.
Till my next blog post, be yourself and happy coding!!
