From Novice to pro developer

INTRODUCTION

As a Nigerian web developer, I’ve come to realize that failure is not something to be feared or hidden, but rather something to be embraced and learned from. In fact, I’ve come to understand that failure is only a road to success. My journey so far has been marked by mistakes, missteps, and moments of doubt, but its through these experiences that I’ve grown and learned the most. In this post, I’ll share some of the most significant mistakes I’ve made, what I learned from them, and how they’ve helped me become a better developer. If you’re a fellow developer or just starting out, I hope my experiences will help you achieve your goals faster. Hi friends, I am a full-stack web developer, the problem with just starting out wether its music or football you are prone to mistakes and these mistakes have left me doubting if tech is meant for me and making me want to give tech up completely (Luckily I didn’t go that route).

Paralysis by Analysis

This is my first but not my biggest mistake in my career so far. When I first got into react (a tool for building websites) I realized a common trend in tutorials

This is a mistake most developers make

and because of this I felt the need to learn everything before I can do anything though it played out well in my head, in reality this didn’t seem to be doable, in short it even ended up killing my drive to open up my code editor everyday. I understand how important foundations are but most tutorials out there advise beginners to learn anything learnable before they will ever be able to create a simple project and this can easily lead to burn out, reduced drive and reading without understanding. I didn’t realize this until a close friend of mine advised me to just build a simple website. view on this is simple, you can always google these things up, the best way to learn is to learn the foundations and build something because no matter how much theory you get you will never match up with the next guy’s practical experience.

Chasing Paychecks Over Purpose

This has to be my biggest mistake overall and a mistake I can say almost cost me my entire career. The learning stage is over and you now have the skills to build a complete website, you start to hear different gist’s of how much people build website’s, and it’s only a matter of time before you start calling ridiculous prices to potential customers, which ultimately drive them away. When I initially started learning web I had a reasonable and affordable price range in mind but as soon as I started hearing these prices I immediately changed my mentality so much so I turned down about three deals that people would do anything for, now I am not saying that you shouldn’t charge well for building a website but what you need to consider is that most people charging these prices have been in the field for a long time and have a huge reputation and long list of satisfied customers to back up those prices, I realized the mistake I was making in a discussion with my brother and in this context he essentially mentioned people willing to take a leap of faith in someone like me with no experience or referrer is because they don’t want to spend much money, if they planned on spending a lot of money they would just go to a web development agency, there they are assured they wont regret it. Essentially when I changed my focus to be more on getting my work out there than making money I realized the joy in getting my first .com or .org website is far more important to me. In summary what I learned from this mistake was something a potential customer told me

“When starting a business your focus should be on winning customers hearts”

Impatience in the Job Hunt

I can remember so many scenarios where I almost accepted impossible projects just because I so badly wanted to build a website and make my first amount from it. A close friend once told me to just keep grinding and the customers would come, as wholesome as that sounds, being in Nigeria and constantly in search of your daily bread, that just doesn’t seem to be as reassuring as it should be; I woke up one morning only to find a guy talking about how he is in search of someone who can build him a web based power distribution system, Of course I was just starting out and I knew I couldn’t build this because there is no clear example online to even understand the algorithm, let alone build it myself, luckily for me the project wasn’t given to me but now looking back at that, I would have ended up returning the clients money and damaging my reputation. On a not-so-surprising note everyone else ran away from that project simply because it was not realistic. What I learned from this is just to keep on learning new and valuable skills in the industry and keep advertising my work, someone always needs a website, rushing into anything out of desperation rarely ever flies by without consequences.

Conclusion

In conclusion, my journey as a Nigerian web developer so far, has been marked by mistakes, but also growth and learning. From almost landing my self in tutorial hell to almost destroying my career because of greed, still I’m pushing forward, growing and most importantly learning. I hope my mistakes will not only serve as a guide in your decision making but also help you fast track your career in tech. Remember the only way to get better is to keep learning, and the only way to learn is to keep trying.

Until next time, 😉 when I’ll be back with more insights on tech in Nigeria…