Okorie Christian
2 min readJan 26, 2021

An unlikely programmer: My baby steps in the world of software development

Growing up, I never imagined I’d ever code. I was just that guy whose interest was only politics and business. Then came November 2019. I left for Lagos where I met Bernard, who was a software Engineer. Bernard introduced me to the world of software engineering and guided me through some of the products he was working on. While in Lagos, I attended a tech summit organized for mobile developers. The experience captivated me and I didn’t just want to use products, I wanted to start making them. This desire propelled me into picking up coding. Between November 2019 and January 2020, I was experimenting with Java and Xml to build native android applications. Much later in January 2020, I was introduced to the flutter framework by Bernard. I found flutter particularly interesting because of its single code base. I have been using flutter since then.

My first job experience on mobile development
My first job was an internship role on mobile development. I was very excited at that moment. The feeling that I was going to solve real life problems, coupled with the fact that I was going to learn, earn and work in a team was priceless😂 . On starting the job I encountered a lot of difficulties, especially after I discovered that I was the only mobile developer in the firm. I basically started building their products from scratch (single handedly!), with the guidance of my then CTO. My first month was great, at least I was able to do lots of crazy things on my own. Especially when I was building the frontend of the firm’s logistics application. From the second month, the pressure was much and the corona virus pandemic didn’t make it any easier. Working from home made me aware of the fact that haven’t really been learning, I was just delivering tasks, not minding the process. While I was result oriented and delivered on my projects, I was not learning as much as I’d love to. I had to resign in September 2020. Rexford asked to join his team, “FLUTTER AFRICAN DEVELOPERS “ . The forum gave me access to lots of smart people who always came to my aid whenever I had a bug. In January 2021, I joined Rexford in Flutter hall where we reach out to young tech enthusiasts who are interested in learning Flutter across Asia and Africa to work ,learn together and give ourselves the best of the experiences we need.

Conclusion

You don’t have to be too smart to be good at what you do. It takes only resilience and consistency to be good. If you fail, don’t be ashamed of trying again. I hope this inspires newbies coming into programming out there to keep pushing.