well, might as well put it out there. I love anime and I am a Lord Pain stan. so expect a bit of anime references going forward

Where to begin?

pandemic . Yes, it was not exactly something anyone saw coming but it was what set me on my current path. I started learning software development early April. Before then, I had concluded my degree (Finance) and was interning with the Securities and Exchange Commission(Nov-Feb.).

By march, I got a job offer from a boutique investment bank (Planet capital)to come in as a graduate intern for a year and then transition into a full time role. My plan was, leave the SEC, register for NYSC(for non-Nigerians, NYSC is National Youth Service Corps. Its a mandatory one year service to your country after college), then after the three weeks camp(pretty much a military camp), join planet capital.

As my friend would say "man proposes, God disposes". merely one week into the camp, it was closed abruptly. This happened on my birthday(March 19). I was in Jos which is a city in Plateau state north central Nigeria. I was taking calls and responding to wishes while going from building to building looking for an apartment to rent on short notice(found one eventually).

Lockdown Proper

I have been living in jos for a while, then the state governor announced the state was about to go into total lockdown. Not interested in being trapped several miles from home(Lagos), I packed my bags and headed home.

Two weeks into the lockdown, I was gallivanting on social media (twitter) then came across a guy who was offering access to his google drive that had a ton of courses on software development saved in it. Now, this is not exactly my first rodeo with software development seeing as i had already learnt html and basic(if such a thing exists lol) css. But all that free time afforded me the opportunity to actually dive deep into software development.

JavaScript oh JavaScript

This was a headache for a while. To be honest, I abandoned software development three times because of JavaScript. Twitter to the rescue again as i came across a tweet that educated people on "how to learn".

I learn better with print media(books) when starting a new framework or technology. It eases me into the video content. The book that did it for me was Eloquent JavaScript. This helped me greatly understand the fundamentals of JavaScript. going forward, I also used the freecodecamp complete JavaScript course, the YouTube course by Mosh and so many others.

One trick to learning JavaScript, is to learn by teaching.

Moving Forward

After months of learning JavaScript, it was time to decide what path to take . Front end or back end. I will admit, it was an easy decision. I was always attracted to backend(server side) development and decided to start learning NodeJS and frankly, it was one of the best decisions i made this year.

Where am I sojourning to?

Technical writing. This wasn't exactly part of the initial plan because even though I loved writing (blogged for years on steemit), I never imagined I will be making technical articles. I made this decision while I was trying to implement Oauth using Passport. I saw a lot of articles and lets just say they did not help much.

The best way to learn is by teaching

I want to start writing technical articles not just to reinforce my knowledge on those topics, frameworks or tools, but to help out new self taught developers by writing articles in such a simplified manner that I wished I had found then. The goal is to teach, learn by teaching, impact and hopefully, make lives easier for developers tying to learn certain concepts or frameworks.

Highlights

Switching careers is not an easy thing. If you are wondering, I never accepted the job offer. In ten months (march - December), I have gone from a tech dummy to a backend developer that has two internships(tech this time) in the bag and have done freelance for clients abroad and now, as from today, a technical writer.

Conclusion

I have never written a technical article in my life an would need a lot of help to get better as practice makes perfect. So when I start releasing technical articles, I would appreciate honest feedback and criticism as this will encourage me to grow and get better. I also hope to become a technical or guest writer for a company. so if you know someone, keep me in the loop.

This post is my Hello World to the Hashnode community.